American border controls

I read in the Washington Post that

"Federal agents may take a traveler's laptop computer or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.

Also, officials may share copies of the laptop's contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued by two DHS agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement."

Yes that is right, US federal agents can take your laptop from you on entry to the US, keep it for as long as they want, copy any data off of it and transcribe that data as a permanent record AND all of that without any suspicion of wrongdoing.

According to the Washington Post report

"the policies cover "any device capable of storing information in digital or analog form," including hard drives, flash drives, cellphones, iPods, pagers, beepers, and video and audio tapes. They also cover "all papers and other written documentation," including books, pamphlets and "written materials commonly referred to as 'pocket trash' or 'pocket litter.'"

So a business visitor carrying the usual laptop, Blackberry, cellphone, couple of USB memory sticks, camera plus memory cards and some CDs could lose all of that equipment and data storage on the whim of a Federal agent, and lose it for an unspecified length of time.

My self-imposed NotaSheep travel ban on visiting the USA seems not to be ending any time soon.