I reported last month on a remarkable Ninth Circuit ruling holding that border police can search citizens’ laptops without cause. Now, the Department of Homeland Security is taking advantage of the ruling and trying to push it as far as it will go. DHS’s new policy claims that the Department can seize laptops for as long as they want - including to catch people with material that violates “copyright or trademark laws.”
Better clean your music library before taking that vacation to Mexico. (Actually, CNET advises that you “encrypt your laptop, with full disk encryption if possible, and power it down before you go through customs.”)
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Better, buy a laptop such as one of the Asus EEE PC units which meets your requirements for whatever you want a laptop for and no more, and carry that through Customs in its original, straight from the manufacturer state.
When you get to journey’s end, pull the data you want to use from home over an encrypted link. Before you head home, back up data to home via an encrypted link then wipe the laptop completely.
If the US immigration people want to play silly buggers, let ‘em. It isn’t as if they’re going to find anything on a clean laptop, now is it?