The Washington Post is writing about an alarming development in the “war on terror”.
It seems that instead of being content on just searching people’s electronic devices, without a warrant or other grounds, the US Customs officers are now copying information out of travelers’ laptops, cell phones, mp3 players and other electronic devices that store information on them.
Nobody’s been able to find out what they’re actually doing with the data after it’s been copied. Where is it stored, who sees it, what is done with the information. Nobody knows.
Everything seems to be free game. Call logs from cellphones, browsing histories from browsers, Word documents, etc.
Naturally companies whose employees travel out or into the US often are quite concerned. The Washington Post article lists several real concerns about this “policy”. How are they to protect trade secrets, sensitive information about clients or journalistic sources when the information can be copied at will by minimum wage flunkies on the US border.
-TPP
