If that is true, why is it the case? Someone inept (or malicious) could do massive damage to data without ones knowledge. They could do so even if you were watching, but knowing what needs to be fixed/recovered from backup would reduce the hassle factor enormously.

The thing that struck me as odd about it was that all of the physical searching was done right in front of me, with every opportunity for me to see exactly what was being searched and put everything back in its place afterwards. Maybe they aren't required to do that, but they did it that way. Why then conduct the laptop data search in such a different manner?