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Travelers Fear Laptop Computer Seizures
Business travelers are growing increasingly concerned that their laptop computers will be seized or their contents examined at American customs and immigration checkpoints when entering the U.S. from abroad.
The threat was a hot topic at a recent conference of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE) in Barcelona, Spain.
The association found in a survey that nearly 90 percent of its 2,500 or so members – corporate-travel managers and travel industry officials – were unaware that customs officials can legally scrutinize a traveler’s laptop and even seize it for a time without offering a reason, the New York Times reports.
ACTE Executive Director Susan Gurley said: "The information that U.S government officials have the right to examine, download, or even seize business travelers’ laptops came as a surprise to the majority of our members. The common belief is that there is a right to the privacy of one’s computer. Yet it appears that there is none.”
One survey respondent claimed that her laptop had been randomly seized and she was still waiting to get it back a year later.
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Tim Kane, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who is researching the threat for corporate clients, told the Times that officials "don’t need probable cause to perform these searches under the current law. They can do it without suspicion or without really revealing their motivations.”
A federal court ruled in July that laptops may be examined under the so-called border search exemption, which permits searches of persons entering the U.S. "without probably causes, reasonable suspicion or a warrant.”
The ruling applies to both U.S. passport holders and non-U.S. passport holders.
The ACTE is asking the government for better guidelines so corporate policies regarding employees traveling with proprietary information on their computers can be re-evaluated, according to the Times. Some companies, concerned that data on a seized laptop could be unavailable for a period of time, are considering telling travelers to encrypt any sensitive information and e-mail it to themselves before re-entering the country.
Editor's note:
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