Laptops at U.S. border: No privacy rights
According to an article in the New York Times, the Association of Corporate Travel Executives is asking the U.S. government for more detailed guidelines on [a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/24/business/24road.html?_r=3&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin"]when and why a laptop gets confiscated at the U.S. border[/a], which, anecdotally, is happening more often. The story includes a report from a business traveler who had her laptop confiscated over a year ago and has yet to have it returned."
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A lot of business travelers are walking around with laptops that contain private corporate information that their employers really do not want outsiders to see.
Until recently, their biggest concern was that someone might steal the laptop. But now there's a new worry: the laptop will be seized or its contents scrutinized at customs and immigration checkpoints upon entering the United States.
Although much of the evidence for the confiscations remains anecdotal, it is a hot topic this week among more than a thousand corporate travel managers and travel industry officials meeting in Barcelona at a conference of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives.
Last week, an informal survey by the association, which has about 2,500 members worldwide, indicated that almost 90 percent of its members were not aware that U.S. customs officials have the authority to scrutinize the contents of travelers' laptops and even confiscate them for a period of time, without giving a reason. Appeals are under way in some confiscation cases, but the law is clear.
"They don't need probable cause to perform these searches under the current law," said Tim Kane, a Washington lawyer who is researching the matter for corporate clients. "They can do it without suspicion or without really revealing their motivations."
Laptops may be scrutinized and subject to a "forensic analysis" under the so-called border search exemption, which allows searches of people entering the United States and their possessions "without probable cause, reasonable suspicion or a warrant," a U.S. court ruled in July.
The association is asking the U.S. government for better guidelines so corporate policies on traveling with proprietary information can be re-evaluated. It is also asking whether corporations need to reduce the proprietary data that travelers carry.
"We need to be able to better inform our business travelers what the processes are if their laptops and data are seized - what happens to it, how do you get it back," said Susan Gurley, the group's executive director.
Besides the possibility for misuse of proprietary information, travel executives are also concerned that a seized computer, and the information it holds, becomes unavailable for a time. A remedy some companies are considering is having travelers encrypt critical information and e-mail it to themselves before entering the country, protecting access to the data, if not privacy.
A U.S. court in California recently went against the trend, ruling that laptop searches were a serious invasion of privacy.
"People keep all sorts of personal information on computers," the court said, citing diaries, personal letters, financial records, lawyers' confidential client information and reporters' notes on confidential sources. In that specific case, the federal court ruled that "the correct standard requires that any border search of the information stored on a person's electronic storage device be based, at a minimum, on a reasonable suspicion."
In its informal survey, the association also found that 87 percent of its members said they would be less likely to carry confidential business or personal information on international trips now that they were aware of how easily laptop contents could be searched.
