ACLU takes on US government over laptop scanning

Sleuth's always slightly nervous about the US Customs service, since its officials seem to have more power than the gods and can make life very uncomfortable. But from a corporate perspective Customs have one trump card; its officers can search your laptop.

This has caused not inconsiderable worry to business travellers. After all, the whole cost justification for business travel is to do deals and sign contracts. This means having a lot of commercially sensitive information on your computer, and having to hand that over to a government official increases the potential for damaging data loss. As we've seen from ECHELON, governments have no problem using monitoring technology for commercial gain.

Ever since the September 11th atrocity and the passing of the Patriot Act the US government has reserved the right to take a complete mirror of your hand drive the second you enter the country. The issue has become such a hot point that many companies, and at least one major commercial bank in Sleuth's knowledge, issues travel laptops for high value employees. These are blank from a data perspective; a bare bones operating system and a VPN network to download key data once Customs have been cleared.

Privacy and human rights groups have been fighting these kinds of rules since they were set up, but this week the ACLU has started what could be a crucial case. So far the ACLU estimates over 6,000 laptops have been searched by Customs, about half of which were systems owned by US citizens.

The court case is filed on behalf of the National Press Photographers' Association (NPPA), the National Association of Criminal Defence Lawyers (NACDL) and one private citizen, Pascal Abidor, a 26 year-old U.S.-French dual citizen and a PhD student

This case could be a crucial one for IT administrators. A privacy ruling would make everyone's life easier. No-one's saying that a country shouldn't have the right to examine data when a threat is identified but the blanket approach taken so far can't be sustained - it hurts the US and its reputation more than any security threat.