Border Agents Can Search Laptops W/Out Cause

Ya better be careful what you store on your laptop because TSA agents may just see it.

Took digital pictures of your wife nude in your hotel room? Show them to the TSA if you want to.

Federal agents at the border do not need any reason to search through travelers' laptops, cell phones or digital cameras for evidence of crimes, a federal appeals court ruled Monday, extending the government's power to look through belongings like suitcases at the border to electronics.

The unanimous three-judge decision reverses a lower court finding that digital devices were "an extension of our own memory" and thus too personal to allow the government to search them without cause. Instead, the earlier ruling said, Customs agents would need some reasonable and articulable suspicion a crime had occurred in order to search a traveler's laptop.

On appeal, the government argued that was too high a standard, infringing upon its right to keep the country safe and enforce laws. Civil rights groups, joined by business traveler groups, weighed in, defending the lower court ruling.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the government, finding that the so-called border exception to the Fourth Amendment's prohibition on unreasonable searches applied not just to suitcases and papers, but also to electronics.

My personal take on this is it fucking stinks. I have no problem with agents searching my luggage for bombs or other dangerous items. That makes sense for the safety of the other passengers, but how will a digital picture bring down an airplane?

This is just out of control. "Sorry, can't let you on the plane and you're under arrest. Those things in that picture [breasts] look like bombs."

Via BlackListedNews.