I can say that you should feel very safe in the U.S. and from now on terrorists will have a hard job in destroying American buildings. According to a report, U.S. federal agents have the permission of retaining the laptops and electronic devices of travelers at the border.
This measure applies even for American citizens and due to the Department of Homeland Security policies, your laptop can be seized “for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing.” Also, the content of your device can be shared with all other agencies for data encryption and more.
It seems like these measures were in place for a long time and they were disclosed in July thanks to the pressures from civil liberties and business travel groups that reported a high number of seized laptops and cellphones.
Here is the list of what federal agents can take from you - hard drives, flash drives, cellphones, iPods, pagers, beepers, and video and audio tapes, and even books, pamphlets and “written materials.”
However, any material coming from business information and attorney-client privileged material are destroyed after the federal agents complete their research therefore the information will not be kept. I don’t know about you, but I think that this only alarms people and it scares them. For me this is kind of a paranoiac measure.
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