Traveling into or out of the country? Prepare to have your cell phone, laptop, and other electronic devices seized -for no apparent reason to you. It's becoming positively Orwellian in this country, and the government's police powers are absolute.
* "she was detained at customs and her cellphone was taken from her purse... after her phone was returned, Mango saw that records of her daughter's calls had been erased."
* "her company laptop was seized by a federal agent as she was flying from Dulles International Airport to London."
* "laptops have been seized and their contents copied"
* "Your kid can be arrested because they can't prove the songs they downloaded to their iPod were legally downloaded."
* "Lawyers run the risk of exposing sensitive information about their client. Trade secrets can be exposed to customs agents with no limit on what they can do with it. Journalists can expose sources, all because they have the audacity to cross an invisible line."
* an officer "went through every number and text message on my cellphone and took out my SIM card in the back,"
The U.S. government has argued in a pending court case that its authority to protect the country's border extends to looking at information stored in electronic devices such as laptops without any suspicion of a crime.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/06/AR200802...
That is seriously effed up.