It has been about a year since we first heralded the beginnings of laptop searches by Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officers. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has just filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit to learn how the agency’s policy has impacted the civil liberties of travelers.
The ACLU made an initial FOIA request for the CBP’s records in June. Today’s lawsuit seeks to enforce that request. Among the documents being sought by the ACLU are records pertaining to the criteria used for selecting passengers for suspicionless searches, the number of people who have been subject to the searches, the number of devices and documents retained and the reasons for their retention.
The ACLU release on the lawsuit noted:
“Traveling with a laptop shouldn’t mean the government gets a free pass to rifle through your personal papers,” said Catherine Crump, staff attorney with the ACLU First Amendment Working Group. “This sort of broad and invasive search is exactly what the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches are designed to prevent.”
In its policy, CBP asserts it is free to read the information on travelers’ laptops “absent individualized suspicion.” CBP claims the right to search all files saved on laptops, including personal financial information, family photographs and lists of Web sites travelers have visited, without having reason to believe a traveler has broken the law. Additionally, CBP’s policy extends to suspicionless searches of “documents, books, pamphlets and other printed material, as well as computers, disks, hard drives and other electronic or digital storage devices.” The policy covers all persons, whether or not they are U.S. citizens, crossing the border.
Consumer Traveler has been at the forefront of efforts to publicize these extraordinary CBP powers. We have published articles regularly regarding the lack of constraints on the CBP when it comes to seizing and searching personal information.
We wrote about the upcoming Senate bill and its ramifications.
We have analyzed the Travelers’ Privacy Protection Act of 2008.
Here’s a warning of the coming laptop seizures.
Here the head of the Department of Homeland Security defends the practice.
Charlie Leocha is the President of Travelers United. He has been working in Washington, DC, for the past 14 years with Congress, the Department of Transportation, and industry stakeholders on travel issues. He was the first consumer representative to the Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protections appointed by the Secretary of Transportation from 2012 through 2018.
