In the latest insult to the Fourth Amendment, a Brooklyn judge has upheld the right to search and seize laptop computers at the border.
http://www.nytimes.com/...
The lawsuit was filed in 2010 by Pascal Abidor, a graduate student in Islamic studies, who sued the government after American border agents removed him from an Amtrak train crossing from Canada to New York. He was handcuffed, placed in a cell and questioned for several hours, then his laptop was seized and kept for 11 days.
The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the National Press Photographers Association were also plaintiffs in the case, arguing that their members travel with confidential information that should be protected from government scrutiny.
In rejecting this argument, Judge Korman cited the rarity of electronic device searches and questioned whether travelers need to carry computers containing sensitive data when they travel abroad.
Since when is "They don't do it very often," an excuse for doing something unconstitutional? It's not even accurate, for some people. Just ask Laura Poitras.
And the judge, Edward R. Korman of the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of New York, seems to be the last person on earth to ask what you should take along when you travel. From his official biography
https://www.nyed.uscourts.gov/...
it seems he's lived his whole life in Brooklyn and he may never have traveled farther than Manhattan. He was born in 1942 so he's 71 years old.
This got me thinking about what Pascal Abidor ought to do with the computer they eventually returned to him. Did they put spyware in it? Does it have some extra gadget in it that spies on him? He'd be foolish to assume they didn't do something like that. Previously I mused that such a computer should be donated to an elementary school, but tonight I thought of something better. It should be sent to an expert who can look through its hardware and software for anything suspicious. Several governments in South America would be very happy to get their hands on a computer the NSA might have bugged.