Como se não bastassem outros motivos estranhos, agora a probabilidade de ficar sem portátil, telemóvel, players multimédia, e outros dispositivos capazes de armazenamento de mensagens terroristas (como por exemplo um folha de papel amarrotada no bolso, que pode ser um conjunto de instruções disfarçadas de futuro lixo), é extremamente elevada.

• Travelers’ Laptops May Be Detained At Border, No Suspicion Required Under DHS Policies [Washington Post]
  

  “The policies . . . are truly alarming,” said Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), who is probing the government’s border search practices. He said he intends to introduce legislation soon that would require reasonable suspicion for border searches, as well as prohibit profiling on race, religion or national origin.

• 1-8-2008 – What? Laptops, iPods, Cellphones Can Be Taken Indefinitely [Brenda Stardom Report]
  

  Even more shocking is the fact the contents can be shared “with other agencies and private entities”. What are they looking for? Good old DHS says it’s to prevent terrorism. Give me a break. Guess what? It’s not just laptops, iPods and Cellphones. Anything capable of information storage, such as hard drives, pagers, flash drives, beepers (people still use beepers?) and get this, both audio and video tapes. It gets better (sarcasm) — books, papers, and pamphlets and “pocket trash” which could possibly include letters, notes, or anything really.

• DHS border policy: we can steal anything from you, read all your data, and disclose it to anyone we want [Cory Doctorow na Boing Boing]
  

  The DHS has disclosed its official policy on laptop border seizures: they can take your laptop, or anything else, for no reason at all, forever, and disclose anything they find to anyone they feel like.

• U.S. Government Policy for Seizing Laptops at Borders [Bruce Schneier]
  

  Amazing.  The U.S. government has published its policy: they can take your laptop anywhere they want, for as long as they want, and share the information with anyone they want.
  It’s not the policy that’s amazing; it’s the fact that the government has actually made it public.
  My previous essay on crossing borders with laptops, and how to protect yourself.
  Although honestly, the best thing is probably to keep your encrypted archives on some network drive somewhere, and download what you need after you cross the border.

• DHS Allowed To Take Laptops Indefinitely [discussão na /.]