No, You Can’t Search My Laptop
Testimony to the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution
In recent months I have become increasingly aware of what I consider a deeply flawed policy. The U.S. Customs and Border Patrol now takes the position that it can seize and copy the contents of a laptop or other computing device for a traveler entering the United States, based simply on its authority to do traditional border searches.
The government seems to believe that, if they can open a suitcase at the border, then they can open a laptop as well. This simplistic legal theory ignores the massive factual differences between a quick glance into a suitcase and the ability to copy a lifetime of files from someone’s laptop, and then examine those files at the government’s leisure.
This issue has come into sharp focus since the April decision of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in U.S. v. Arnold. That panel clearly ruled that CPB can seize a laptop computer at the border, and examine its contents, without any reasonable suspicion of unlawful activity. Affidavits in that case and other credible reports show that agents at the border are going further—they are requiring travelers to reveal their passwords or encryption keys so that government agents can examine the full content of the laptop or other computing device.
…