Did you miss the "That's just me" part? I don't make policy, I was merely offering an opinion. Please don't draw conclusions that aren't there.

Easy there, WWNF, consider it a hypothetical if need be; I read the 'That's just me' part just fine. I'm well aware, and perhaps thankful, you don't make policy, and that we have something of a constitution left to prevent those policy makers who would rush to trample the 4th from doing so. Fact is, you claimed there's been several arrests in the past week for travelling to an exotic location for the purposes of child molestation, made a tenuous link from that to importation of kiddie porn, and then trip all over yourself rushing to have CBP invasively search your computer drives in the hopes that those who (hopefully) deserve to be locked up, receive that punishment.
It's a frequent and often (mis)used tactic to claim that if only certain rights were not in our way, we could stop kiddie porn, drunk driving, deadbeat dads or whatever hysteria du jour is currently being whipped up. And if some line up for voluntary laptop searches, as you suggested you would, it's too easy for some in CBP to conclude that those who don't want their laptops searched, and are tired of the government claiming that any search they decide to undertake is legal (me) must have something to hide.

As the law stands, they're going to search my laptop whether I want them to or not.

- Leave your computer at home
- Encrypt your drive with toughest encryption existed (try searching, ie PCP with 1024-bit key)
- Scrub your drive before returning
- all key data on encrypted HD
- or email encrypted data back home

Question: As FTers I believe that we do quite a bit of international traveling.

Which of you has ever had your laptop examined beyond the point of being x-rayed (or, before that, having to show that it can be turned on)?

I am including both CBP and TSA examinations in this.

(In my own case, the CBP has only checked anything I was carrying one time. That was in Boston and consisted of putting my suitcase on an x-ray machine.)

Laptop has never been checked by CBP or any other immigration body.
Been swabbed about 15 times by a few TSA checkpoints and at CBR, MEL and LHR. Normally when I get the ‘random’ secondary.
Been asked to open it once, at MSP in 2005. Most likely because it hadn’t shut down properly and the lights were still flashing when it went through the checkpoint.

Or use a web-based backup drive like X-Drive or Amazon S3. Firefox has add-ons for both.

I have never had my laptop inspected after an international trip, but I sympathize with those who feel their 4th amendment rights have been violated. While it's true a few who carry child porn on their laptops may be caught this way early on, in the future they can easily evade detection by putting it on a DVD and mail it back home to themselves. In fact, everything one puts on a laptop can be put on a different media and sent via First Class mail (or international equivalent).

While I'm not qualified to determine the constitutionality of such searches, I find it hard to believe that in the long term, all these searches will result in anything other than a modification of behavior.