Anyone who actually reads the released policy will quickly construe it as a license for rampant abuse by many levels of government. While the policy includes provisions that provide the appearance of protections and checks, they’re so vague that they’re nothing more than window dressing. There’s no definition of what a “reasonable time” is, and it looks like a seized item can be passed around to different agencies to execute their own agendas in a process that can take an indefinite period. For that matter, there’s no requirement to return the item and its data in complete and working condition, if they do return it at all.

There’s also a provision for some sort of review and audit, but it doesn’t say anything about the reviewer being independent or the audit results getting released to the public. Given the track record of the DHS and the Bush administration, any such audits are likely to be conducted by loyal DHS personnel and the results classified for “national security reasons.” (We’ll just have to accept on faith their official statements that “audits show full compliance with procedures and no abuses.”) Any protections or checks and balances in the policy are purely cosmetic, and serve only to help the administration neutralize or vilify critics.

The specific inclusion of “copyright” in the list of possible violations the seizures can investgate (right alongside terrorism and child pornography) is particularly frightening. As I noted earlier, unless you can prove that every file on an iPod or laptop is legitimate and in compliance with the copyright owner’s licensing agreement you’re open to whatever trouble the prosecutor feels like. It provides an unlimited supply of “low hanging fruit” for any prosecutor or official who wants to toady up to the RIAA or the MPAA.

You may not have been concerned about this when you wrote your article, but I hope you’re now beginning to realize what this policy really represents. It’s just the latest power grab from an adminsitration that has already granted itself the power to ignore or modify laws passed by Congress through “signing statements,” wiretap anyone it wants whenever it wants, to declare anyone it wants an “enemy combatant” and spirit them away forever to a legal black hole, and to start wars on false pretenses. We’ve allowed ourselves to be terrorized into accepting all of that as part of a vaguely-defined permanent “Global War On Terror” (which includes the TSA’s completely idiotic War on Liquids, Toiletries and Shoes continually fought at airports).

And now they want the power to arbitrarily seize electronics at the border, keep them indefinitely, and tear them apart looking for whatever pretense they can find to prosecute whoever they want if that happens to suit their current needs. I think it’s time to stop allowing the administration to destroy the very foundations of our society in the name of pretending to protect us.

For the record, I don’t watch Fox News. I’m a CNN/Chicago Tribune/NY Times reader, preferring print to television.

It doesn’t matter that Mr. Hawkins doesn’t feel personally impacted by the legal implications mentioned here. Many people are impacted, and they are not helped by his tone here. In the end, semantically, he offered very little if anything of import to the subject.

They say a liberal is a conservative who got arrested unjustly. One day he will be impacted, and he won’t get support or even any sympathy from the people at which he cracks wise.

Personally, I doubt I’ll ever read any of Mr. Hawkins’ work in the future. I take travel a lot more seriously than he thinks I do and I’m not part of his target demographic.

Only guilty people need the protection of rights, everyone knows that. Why, you must be guilty of something to not want to allow the good public servants to rifle through your property. You know they cannot tell you the reasons why they are doing it; the ‘bad guys’ might find out and find a way to game the system! Why, all the rules are top secret, because someone might discover that Barney Fife or the guys on Car 54 said the same thing fifty years ago. Can’t have that you know.

Now we’ve gone and done it, we’re on the DNF list, the security risk list, why, anyone who has taken an oath to defend the Constitution is now a risk to DHS . . .

The problem is that the government is asserting the right to seize your laptop, camera, or anything else and keep it indefinitely, for any reason or for no reason at all. And then they can fish through it at their leisure for any possible violation, including copyright. Can you prove that every file on your laptop or iPod is legally obtained and used in strictly accordance with the EULA? If you can’t (and presumably the burden is on you), you’re liable to whatever charges and penalties the prosecutor feels like asserting that day, possibly motivated by political needs.

In effect, the policy is not only an arbitrary taking of your property (the policy doesn’t even mention returning anything), but the power to arbitrarily harass people with civil or criminal charges after an open-ended fishing expedition. While the government has a legitimate obligation to protect the borders, this authority to arbitrarily seize property goes beyond any legitimate security need. It violates the core values and principles that have defined the United States, but provides no apparent benefit.

If such a broad authority is genuinely necessary, it should be the result of a Congressional authorization after public debate rather than a secret fiat from the Executive Branch.

If an LEO wants to search they’ll just claim you acting furtively, what ever that means. Bingo, probable cause. If an officer wants to search you, decline. If they press it, then the burden shifts to them. Not that its much a burden, but it does add some hoops. It’ll anger them too, which means the search will be more intense than necessary simply because you invoked your rights.

So much for the oath to uphold the Constitution which they take. But thats life.