The Washington Post published an article about two policies issued by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agencies. According to those policies border agents can seize any electronic devices, including but not limited to notebooks, PDAs or storage devices and any form of documentation and paper, even in written form, without suspicion for an undisclosed amount of time.
They may also send the data to other agencies and even private entities “for language translation, data decryption or other reasons”. This policies do not only affect foreign visitors of the United States but also United States citiziens.
The data has to be destroyed after the review and private entities have to send the data back to the agencies. Everything that has been documented however does not have to be deleted.
“They’re saying they can rifle through all the information in a traveler’s laptop without having a smidgen of evidence that the traveler is breaking the law,” said Greg Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology. Notably, he said, the policies “don’t establish any criteria for whose computer can be searched.”
This in effect means that even if you cause no suspicion you can have your electronic devices and papers seized and will have to wait a long time before you can get them back. Think of business plans, private videos and photos, electronic diaries not only of “how to build an a-bomb in seven days” type of material. Frightening it is.
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