Leave your electronics at home?
 

"I don't carry my laptop overseas anymore," said Sacramento attorney Mark Reichel. "The fat lady has sung for the fourth amendment."

Maybe he should have studied harder in law school. Nothing has changed with regards to border searches. Legally, what is the difference between personal papers, luggage and laptops? The 4th Amendment covers all equally.

Put down the glass and step away from the Kool-Aid.

"Officers may not read or permit others to read correspondence contained in sealed letter class mail"

The difference between encrypted data on a laptop and sealed first class mail is?

I think that CBP needs to be slapped back to into their role of preventing physical contraband from entering the country.

If sealed mail means it can't be copied, travel with a stamped/addressed envelope and just get a laptop with a removable drive. Pop the drive in the envelope and seal it before entering the TSA area.

Gee why am I not suprised. The 911 excuse is getting abused and used as a vechile to strip the rights of US citizens and travelers, but why am i not suprised since the US is no longer home of the free, but looking more and more 3rd world home of the scared.

CBP can search my laptop and all of the drives they want but there encrypted, but if you dont know where to look and have the passwords your not going to see whats really on the drive. That and the moment they begin to initiate the search I will get their infomation so that i can pass it on to the organization I do research for so that they can send there legal team(HIPPA violation) after that person and who they work for as HIPPA has more teeth and bite then CBP, not to mention all the research partcipants could seek recourse for attempted ID theft.

A) its CBP, not TSA
b) Its first class letter mail. A hard drive would not be letter mail.

this is not new.. its becoming more common as more people travel with laptops.. I don't think 911 has ever been invoked for border laptop searches..
Good luck on that.

How do you figure a CBP agent is violating HIPAA for searching items which contain PHI?

CBP is not a covered entity under HIPAA. Hence there is no enforcement action that can be taken against them by the Department of Health Services Office of Civil Rights (the "HIPAA Police").

If anything, HIPAA may enter into the equation for the owner of the laptop through inadvertent disclosure of any unencrypted PHI. Now whether or not the laptop owner can legally refuse a request by CBP to see the content of a file (electronic or paper) that contains PHI by citing HIPAA privacy/security regulations is something I'd need to research. I seem to remember some kind of exception buried in the regs regarding national security (figures!) but it has been awhile since I've waded through the HIPAA swamp.

It happened to another researcher and the search stopped right there because the CBP official realized that it was more of a hassle/legal trouble then its worth. There is a very large HIPPA notification (with the penalties for violation) on the splash screen and the background on the laptop so its very obvious, to prevent "I never saw XYZ" syndrome.

Beyond that truecrypt will keep them at bay.

The actual policy:

Sealed Letter Class Mail. Officers may not read or permit others to read correspondence contained in sealed letter class mail (the international equivalent of First Class) without an appropriate search warrant or consent. Only articles in the postal system are deemed "mail." Letters carried by individuals or private carriers such as DHL, UPS, or Federal Express, for example, are not considered to be mail, even if they are stamped, and thus are subject to a border search as provided in this policy.

Policy Regarding Border Search of Information

A slap isn't going to do it. I'm not sure an enema with fifteen molar battery acid would get the message across.

ICE had 4 arrests within the last week or so for people traveling to Cambodia for the purpose of molesting children. This tends to make me think there is a bunch of kiddie porn being brought in. I'm not saying that anyone should gleefully give up their rights, but personally, I'd let them search my computer if I knew eventually some of these sick .......s were going to jail. That's just me.

But what permits you to determine that I need to give up my 4th amendment rights and my right to privacy?