Just wondering if anyone returning to the US besides Cooter had problems with customs demanding to see what,s on your hard drive or phone,camera,ipod,etc.I read 2 articles and saw 1 video on Yahoo since reading Cooter,s post.

I put a post on Channels.nl on it but i think the readers misunderstood.This is not on security before boarding a plane,it,s on USA customs when you return to US from another country.

Like i said on the other forum i don,t have anything whatsoever on my electronics with terrorism against the US or other countries if that,s what they,re after,but i do have file sharing software like Limewire,Kazaa and i do have pics of RLD ladies that allow me to take them and keep my favorites on the wallpapers of my laptops and 3 phones.

I do though took advice and did back up of anything i don,t want to lose on an external hard drive which never leaves my home whether i travel international or just down the street plus i e mail pics i take overseas to my account .but still there are reports of people beingn harassed and some had computers taken and never returned.

By the way i asked Honolulu cops i know on the picture issue and the answer i got is if the pics are not of underaged then it,s not their concern but said customs is another area.

Vic,

I think this was posted elsewhere here, but just in case since it is fairly thorough and interesting (not to mention disturbing):

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... id=topnews

Clarity Sought on Electronics Searches
U.S. Agents Seize Travelers' Devices

By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, February 7, 2008; A01

Nabila Mango, a therapist and a U.S. citizen who has lived in the country since 1965, had just flown in from Jordan last December when, she said, she was detained at customs and her cellphone was taken from her purse. Her daughter, waiting outside San Francisco International Airport, tried repeatedly to call her during the hour and a half she was questioned. But after her phone was returned, Mango saw that records of her daughter's calls had been erased.

A few months earlier in the same airport, a tech engineer returning from a business trip to London objected when a federal agent asked him to type his password into his laptop computer. "This laptop doesn't belong to me," he remembers protesting. "It belongs to my company." Eventually, he agreed to log on and stood by as the officer copied the Web sites he had visited, said the engineer, a U.S. citizen who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of calling attention to himself.

Maria Udy, a marketing executive with a global travel management firm in Bethesda, said her company laptop was seized by a federal agent as she was flying from Dulles International Airport to London in December 2006. Udy, a British citizen, said the agent told her he had "a security concern" with her. "I was basically given the option of handing over my laptop or not getting on that flight," she said.

The seizure of electronics at U.S. borders has prompted protests from travelers who say they now weigh the risk of traveling with sensitive or personal information on their laptops, cameras or cellphones. In some cases, companies have altered their policies to require employees to safeguard corporate secrets by clearing laptop hard drives before international travel.

Today, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Asian Law Caucus, two civil liberties groups in San Francisco, plan to file a lawsuit to force the government to disclose its policies on border searches, including which rules govern the seizing and copying of the contents of electronic devices. They also want to know the boundaries for asking travelers about their political views, religious practices and other activities potentially protected by the First Amendment. The question of whether border agents have a right to search electronic devices at all without suspicion of a crime is already under review in the federal courts.

The lawsuit was inspired by two dozen cases, 15 of which involved searches of cellphones, laptops, MP3 players and other electronics. Almost all involved travelers of Muslim, Middle Eastern or South Asian background, many of whom, including Mango and the tech engineer, said they are concerned they were singled out because of racial or religious profiling.

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman, Lynn Hollinger, said officers do not engage in racial profiling "in any way, shape or form." She said that "it is not CBP's intent to subject travelers to unwarranted scrutiny" and that a laptop may be seized if it contains information possibly tied to terrorism, narcotics smuggling, child pornography or other criminal activity.

The reason for a search is not always made clear. The Association of Corporate Travel Executives, which represents 2,500 business executives in the United States and abroad, said it has tracked complaints from several members, including Udy, whose laptops have been seized and their contents copied before usually being returned days later, said Susan Gurley, executive director of ACTE. Gurley said none of the travelers who have complained to the ACTE raised concerns about racial or ethnic profiling. Gurley said none of the travelers were charged with a crime.

"I was assured that my laptop would be given back to me in 10 or 15 days," said Udy, who continues to fly into and out of the United States. She said the federal agent copied her log-on and password, and asked her to show him a recent document and how she gains access to Microsoft Word. She was asked to pull up her e-mail but could not because of lack of Internet access. With ACTE's help, she pressed for relief. More than a year later, Udy has received neither her laptop nor an explanation.

ACTE last year filed a Freedom of Information Act request to press the government for information on what happens to data seized from laptops and other electronic devices. "Is it destroyed right then and there if the person is in fact just a regular business traveler?" Gurley asked. "People are quite concerned. They don't want proprietary business information floating, not knowing where it has landed or where it is going. It increases the anxiety level."

Udy has changed all her work passwords and no longer banks online. Her company, Radius, has tightened its data policies so that traveling employees must access company information remotely via an encrypted channel, and their laptops must contain no company information.

At least two major global corporations, one American and one Dutch, have told their executives not to carry confidential business material on laptops on overseas trips, Gurley said. In Canada, one law firm has instructed its lawyers to travel to the United States with "blank laptops" whose hard drives contain no data. "We just access our information through the Internet," said Lou Brzezinski, a partner at Blaney McMurtry, a major Toronto law firm. That approach also holds risks, but "those are hacking risks as opposed to search risks," he said.
The U.S. government has argued in a pending court case that its authority to protect the country's border extends to looking at information stored in electronic devices such as laptops without any suspicion of a crime. In border searches, it regards a laptop the same as a suitcase.

"It should not matter . . . whether documents and pictures are kept in 'hard copy' form in an executive's briefcase or stored digitally in a computer. The authority of customs officials to search the former should extend equally to searches of the latter," the government argued in the child pornography case being heard by a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco.

As more and more people travel with laptops, BlackBerrys and cellphones, the government's laptop-equals-suitcase position is raising red flags.

"It's one thing to say it's reasonable for government agents to open your luggage," said David D. Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University. "It's another thing to say it's reasonable for them to read your mind and everything you have thought over the last year. What a laptop records is as personal as a diary but much more extensive. It records every Web site you have searched. Every e-mail you have sent. It's as if you're crossing the border with your home in your suitcase."

If the government's position on searches of electronic files is upheld, new risks will confront anyone who crosses the border with a laptop or other device, said Mark Rasch, a technology security expert with FTI Consulting and a former federal prosecutor. "Your kid can be arrested because they can't prove the songs they downloaded to their iPod were legally downloaded," he said. "Lawyers run the risk of exposing sensitive information about their client. Trade secrets can be exposed to customs agents with no limit on what they can do with it. Journalists can expose sources, all because they have the audacity to cross an invisible line." Hollinger said customs officers "are trained to protect confidential information."

Shirin Sinnar, a staff attorney with the Asian Law Caucus, said that by scrutinizing the Web sites people search and the phone numbers they've stored on their cellphones, "the government is going well beyond its traditional role of looking for contraband and really is looking into the content of people's thoughts and ideas and their lawful political activities."

If conducted inside the country, such searches would require a warrant and probable cause, legal experts said.
Customs sometimes singles out passengers for extensive questioning and searches based on "information from various systems and specific techniques for selecting passengers," including the Interagency Border Inspection System, according to a statement on the CBP Web site. "CBP officers may, unfortunately, inconvenience law-abiding citizens in order to detect those involved in illicit activities," the statement said. But the factors agents use to single out passengers are not transparent, and travelers generally have little access to the data to see whether there are errors.

Although Customs said it does not profile by race or ethnicity, an officers' training guide states that "it is permissible and indeed advisable to consider an individual's connections to countries that are associated with significant terrorist activity."

"What's the difference between that and targeting people because they are Arab or Muslim?" Cole said, noting that the countries the government focuses on are generally predominantly Arab or Muslim.

It is the lack of clarity about the rules that has confounded travelers and raised concerns from groups such as the Asian Law Caucus, which said that as a result, their lawyers cannot fully advise people how they may exercise their rights during a border search. The lawsuit says a Freedom of Information Act request was filed with Customs last fall but that no information has been received.

Kamran Habib, a software engineer with Cisco Systems, has had his laptop and cellphone searched three times in the past year. Once, in San Francisco, an officer "went through every number and text message on my cellphone and took out my SIM card in the back," said Habib, a permanent U.S. resident. "So now, every time I travel, I basically clean out my phone. It's better for me to keep my colleagues and friends safe than to get them on the list as well."

Udy's company, Radius, organizes business trips for 100,000 travelers a day, from companies around the world. She says her firm supports strong security measures. "Where we get angry is when we don't know what they're for."

That is the first of the 2 articles i read,but i,m beginning to wonder if this is over reating similiar to the window closing since not a single person that answered on the other forum reported any such hassles.

The only time i,ve been pulled over coming back from Amsterdam,the officer was only intertested in how much money i took in and out of US,nothing else,seen my laptop,phones,ipod,had no interest at all in them.

Welcome to the police state. Your also photographed 14 times for every hour you are out in public. All emails or web sites you visit from your home computer are documented. Phone calls from your home are data mined.

I,m aware of that, i wave at cams in Waikiki as i,m negotating prices with the ladies all the time.They,re the ones that told me of them.After all they can,t do crap about it,if they record you robbing someone perhaps they can.

Thanks for this post, not that I have anything to hide but I want my memories when I get back. So I'll just upload all my data, pictures and such to my server. And my camera memory card will be empty. Are they interested in ipods as well? You can store data on those too.

If they are targeting visitors to The Nederlands, thats discrimination, hmm if this is a problem for me then I want a strip search. On another note does anyone else think that the TSA sucks?

CNN had been running an ongoing story on this all day. Maybe a little extra attention to this will get them to cease and desist.

On second thought, probably not.

I wonder when they'll start putting on their jack-boots as they search our stuff (LOL)!

From that article it seems like they,re targeting middle eastern business people,but an ignatz member Cooter said he was stopped in Seattle and asked to turn on his computer and camera with an explanation that they are l;ooking for child porn which i have no problem with them doing but sounds like he got harassed from his story.Tghat happened to be the only port of entry from Amsterdam i ever got stopped at.But just that 1 time,i entered that way many and just went through.

Once again i got nothing to hide,if they want to catch sick child porn collectors more power to them but just want to make sure i and other of us fun seekers don,t get harassed,So far there has been no one responding tghat claims anything like what,s reported.Also that video started in that guy,s house by the news crew so there might be more to it than reported

I will have a fit if they decide to look thur my camera coming back from our wedding anniversary, yeah it will be full of porn> OUR PORN! (quote)

Should be no worry.I decided yesterday to just tackle this headon with customs so i called them with my prepaid sim card just in case of problem and they said the same thing Honolulu cops told me which is as long as the pics are not of anyone under 18 they will have no reason to confiscate or delete them,but customs went a step ahead of HPD and said to be careful if the lady looks young for i may be asked to prove her age.This is 2 out of 2 favorable answers i got from them,the other was of a legality someone brought up on us going to other country to do what,s illegal in US and their answer was i,m under the laws of the country i visit on what they allow or not allow and not of US govt concern.Thanks for the links tranceaddict,i had my other concern on downloaded music,movies,p2p software answered which i was reluctant to ask for obvious reasons.On a related link it seems the FBI has no concern over downloaded material since that person had all his material searched for a travel plan to rack up miles which got him flagged and was let go everything intact.Hopefully the customs thinks the same way as the FBI.

For the one who suggested deleting your memory card,if they really want to see what was on it all you need is a recovery program and anything deleted can be brought back.That,s on memory cards or hard drives.I,ve proven it on memory card.i,m not going deep into topic but a picture i took got deleted from my Sony memory card beyond my control and i was without that pic only from the time i left that location till i got to my friend,s house who has the recovery cd.The only way to guarantee no one can see contents if you,re that concerned is to destroy the memory card or hard drive.

Tranceaddict-have fun at Trance Energy in Utrecht,been there but i prefer the darker styles-Qlimax,Sensation Black,etc.I,ll try to be at In Qontrol in April,that,s in town so i can get wasted and not have to worry about driving home!

I’m absolutely astonished about what I’m reading here. As far as I understand, these behaviors are against Civil rights and the US Constitution, but I must confess I'm neither an US citizen or jurist.

I’d like to know the Administrative Authorities or the Courts are justifying them.

Best regards.

According to the piece in the Post there are currently two challenges being considered into the Courts to this ridiculous nonsense.

I have yet to have any problems (touch wood/forehead), being a single white male business traveler, but have friends who have been put through the third degree by people asking questions which are completely irrelevant to the whole customs/TSA/Homeland Security supposed role.

What I found really disturbing - and not because it impacts me - was the fact that some of these guys seem to think they can sieze and review cell phones and any kind of personal electronic device, including removing sim cards. With no justification or cause.

And the notion that they are trained to safeguard this information is completely laughable given how incompetent the government has been with securing peoples social security and other records....

Vicgoo - thanks for starting a separate thread on this subject, I hated to hi-jack Cooters trip report everytime a related article was published. I was hassled by Customs in 1997 coming back from Amsterdam. The beagle sat down next to my carry-on bag - nothing illegal in it mind you, but my jacket probably reeked of stale weed. Good thing I also had a wheel of cheese in the bag as well, when the Customs offical asked to see inside my luggage (and who could refuse an offer like that), the first thing that fell out was some smelly cheese. Still it was enough that the dog "hit" on my luggage, so off to further questioning I go. After some basic questioning, I was allowed to leave, and leave I did. Not a pleasant 2 hour experience, and I know others have fared far worse, but I still do not want to go through that again.

In a related article, I guess the Europeans have finally had enough of our shit and decided that "what is good for the goose should be good for the gander".


Travelers to Europe May Face Fingerprinting

By Ellen Nakashima and John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, February 12, 2008; A01



The European Commission will propose tomorrow that all foreign travelers entering and leaving Europe, including U.S. citizens, should be fingerprinted. If approved by the European Parliament, the measure would mean that precisely identifying information on tens of millions of citizens will be added in coming years to databases that could be shared by friendly governments around the world.

The United States already requires that foreigners be fingerprinted and photographed before they enter the country. So does Japan. Now top European security officials want to follow suit, with travelers being fingerprinted and some also having their facial images stored in a Europe-wide database, according to a copy of the proposal obtained by The Washington Post.

The plan is part of a vast and growing trend on both sides of the Atlantic to collect and share data electronically to identify and track people in the name of national security and immigration control. U.S. government computers now have access to data on financial transactions; air travel details such as name, itinerary and credit card numbers; and the names of those sending and receiving express-mail packages -- even a description of the contents.

"It's the only way to be really sure about identifying people," said a European Commission official familiar with the new fingerprinting plan. "With biometric data, it's much easier to track people and know who has come in and who has gone out, including possible terrorists," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to speak publicly.

The timing and logistics of the plan remain uncertain, but it would probably not start for at least a year. Travelers' fingerprints would probably be taken upon arrival and then checked against a database, the official said. That, initially at least, would mean airports where fingerprints would be scanned electronically, the European official said.

"It seems like a steamroller," said Sophie in 't Veld, a Dutch member of parliament who follows privacy and security issues. "There is a new trend in particular in the U.S., the E.U. and Australia to register every single detail of our life. We're tagged. They can follow everything we do. They know where we are. The whole question is: What for? Does this actually make the world a safer place?"

The Bush administration says it does.

"Not only do we support these measures, we applaud them," said Russ Knocke, a spokesman for the Department of Homeland Security. "Measures like fingerprint and passenger-data collection can disrupt the ability of terrorists to move easily across international borders. They also serve to protect American citizens traveling overseas."

DHS already has a database of 85 million sets of fingerprints collected, for instance, from U.S. and foreign travelers stopped at the border for criminal violations, or for U.S. citizens adopting a child overseas. The FBI is building a huge biometric database for criminal justice purposes. All are supposed to be built to the same standards so data queries can be easily exchanged.

The "common ambition across the Atlantic," the European official said, is to achieve "as much interoperability as possible," through common technical standards for fingerprints and facial images. He said strict European data-protection laws would have to be respected before any sharing took place.

The proposal is part of a broader package of measures to strengthen the European entry and exit system so officials can know exactly who is in their country. The United States has a similar entry program and has piloted an exit program, but does not yet automatically track those leaving the country. The measures are also aimed at easing border crossings for law-abiding travelers.

The new European proposals nearly match initiatives undertaken in the United States to screen out terrorists, people who overstay their visas and others.

For several years, the United States has required that airlines that fly into the country transmit detailed passenger data before the flight's arrival. In November, the European Commission, the E.U.'s executive arm, issued the same proposal. The United States is working on an electronic travel authorization system, requiring travelers from countries where visas are not required to visit here to submit identification and travel details before departure. Now the commission is proposing something similar.

Armed guards in plainclothes already sit on flights to and from Europe and within Europe, but the United States wants to be able to put air marshals on many more flights from Europe, DHS spokesman Knocke said. The Bush administration is negotiating this with individual European states.

European privacy advocate Simon Davies said European officials are "blindly following" the United States "without the slightest commitment to openness or accountability."

The problem with border fingerprint systems is that their success rate diminishes as they grow, said Davies, director of the London-based Privacy International. "Adding a hundred million fingerprints of dubious quality on top of an inaccurate database will exponentially increase the failure rate," he said.

About 13 million U.S. citizens fly from the United States to Europe each year, according to the International Air Transport Association. David Stempler, president of the Potomac-based Air Travelers Association, said he has no problem with the proposal, given that the United States requires something similar. "So what's good for the goose is good for the gander," he said.

But Susan Gurley, executive director of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives, which represents 2,500 business executives in the United States and abroad, said that such a database poses the risk of abuse. "Unauthorized access to info of this nature could reveal executive travel patterns," she said. "It's another way to know what you're doing and where you are going."

Anderson reported from Paris. Staff writer Spencer S. Hsu contributed to this report.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 86_pf.html

2nd lawsuit against customs this week,1st is the laptop issue,now this.Just read this-sad.

Updated at 9:58 p.m., Monday, February 11, 2008

Family of infant who died at Honolulu Airport filing suit

Advertiser Staff


The family of an infant from American Samoa who died Friday morning at Honolulu Airport after his mother and a nurse were detained by immigration officials in a locked room plans to file a wrongful death lawsuit.

The Honolulu Medical Examiner's office today identified the infant as 14-day-old Michael Futi of Tafuna, American Samoa's largest village located on the east coast of Tutuila Island. Autopsy findings for cause and manner have been deferred.

Attorney Rick Fried of Cronin, Fried, Sekiya, Kekina & Fairbanks is calling a 1 p.m. news conference tomorrow to announce the lawsuit. Fried today would only say the child, who had come to Hawai'i for heart surgery, died after being detained by airport immigration following a flight from American Samoa.

According to police, the child became unresponsive at 5:50 a.m. Emergency Medical Service personnel dispatched to the airport U.S. Customs checkpoint at 6:15 a.m. took the child to a hospital emergency room where efforts to revive Futi were unsuccessful.

It is unknown how long immigration officials detained the mother, nurse and child in the room and the reason they were held up.

I am absolutely fed up with all these immigration, customs and security people.

Collectively they must rank as the saddest occupational group known to man, they always look sour and unhappy (apart from one lady in Sydney who noticed that it was my birthday and gave me a nice smile). I curse the stupid questions on forms printed in abnormal paper sizes. I curse the little glass boxes that they occupy to mark their separation from humanity. I curse their managers who think up the latest stupid rules (why must my belt be x-rayed?) to increase the cost to airports and thus airlines and thus passengers. Give these people a bit of power and half an excuse and they take actions like these. What right have they got to search or keep equipment or copy documents (otherwise known as commercial espionage)?

Bastards. May they rot in Limbo.

The only positive development in this area is the Schengen agreement, which allows me to travel between (most) EU countries without passing immigration controls (although there is still all the stupid security stuff at airports).

Bah!

Bringing back an old post for a disturbing update....

Travelers' Laptops May Be Detained At Border
No Suspicion Required Under DHS Policies
By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 1, 2008; Page A01

Federal agents may take a traveler's laptop computer or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.

Also, officials may share copies of the laptop's contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption or other reasons, according to the policies data decryption or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued by two DHS agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"The policies . . . are truly alarming," said Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), who is probing the government's border search practices. He said he intends to introduce legislation soon that would require reasonable suspicion for border searches, as well as prohibit profiling on race, religion or national origin.

DHS officials said the newly disclosed policies -- which apply to anyone entering the country, including U.S. citizens -- are reasonable and necessary to prevent terrorism. Officials said such procedures have long been in place but were disclosed last month because of public interest in the matter.

Civil liberties and business travel groups have pressed the government to disclose its procedures as an increasing number of international travelers have reported that their laptops, cellphones and other digital devices had been taken -- for months, in at least one case -- and their contents examined.

The policies state that officers may "detain" laptops "for a reasonable period of time" to "review and analyze information." This may take place "absent individualized suspicion."

The policies cover "any device capable of storing information in digital or analog form," including hard drives, flash drives, cellphones, iPods, pagers, beepers, and video and audio tapes. They also cover "all papers and other written documentation," including books, pamphlets and "written materials commonly referred to as 'pocket trash' or 'pocket litter.' "

Reasonable measures must be taken to protect business information and attorney-client privileged material, the policies say, but there is no specific mention of the handling of personal data such as medical and financial records.

When a review is completed and no probable cause exists to keep the information, any copies of the data must be destroyed. Copies sent to non-federal entities must be returned to DHS. But the documents specify that there is no limitation on authorities keeping written notes or reports about the materials.

"They're saying they can rifle through all the information in a traveler's laptop without having a smidgen of evidence that the traveler is breaking the law," said Greg Nojeim, senior counsel at the Center for Democracy and Technology. Notably, he said, the policies "don't establish any criteria for whose computer can be searched."

Customs Deputy Commissioner Jayson P. Ahern said the efforts "do not infringe on Americans' privacy." In a statement submitted to Feingold for a June hearing on the issue, he noted that the executive branch has long had "plenary authority to conduct routine searches and seizures at the border without probable cause or a warrant" to prevent drugs and other contraband from entering the country.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff wrote in an opinion piece published last month in USA Today that "the most dangerous contraband is often contained in laptop computers or other electronic devices." Searches have uncovered "violent jihadist materials" as well as images of child pornography, he wrote.

With about 400 million travelers entering the country each year, "as a practical matter, travelers only go to secondary [for a more thorough examination] when there is some level of suspicion," Chertoff wrote. "Yet legislation locking in a particular standard for searches would have a dangerous, chilling effect as officers' often split-second assessments are second-guessed."
In April, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit in San Francisco upheld the government's power to conduct searches of an international traveler's laptop without suspicion of wrongdoing.

The Customs policy can be viewed at: http://www.cbp.gov/linkhandler/cgov/tra ... hority.pdf.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... id=topnews

Thanks for posting that update, Harvey.
I read the article in my morning paper today.
Ruined my breakfast! Sure got me mad.
Especially since you don't know who sees things like pics
off your camera's card. And you don't know whether anyone
saves any pics/info for their own "enjoyment".
It's just really sad it's come to this.

I read that as well this morning in the Post and find it completely appalling, but that's what the voters wanted in the last election so that's what they got (not this one mind you).

There is a growing movement to curb Homeland Security in and with the change of administration (plus a likely solid Democratic majority in House and Senate), this shit is going to get curtailed big time.

The worst part of it is the government employees stating this isn't an invasion of privacy when they grab things with zero justification (they have no guidelines for it).

Damn it pisses me off.

Nellie

This is rather disturbing to me, since I tend to travel overseas for work. That said, my last two return trips from Germany were extremely uneventful, and I was carrying a laptop, with a digital camera in the case.

I imagine a lot of corporations would cringe at the thought of confidential corporate data being perused by the government.

My company issued a worldwide memo today indicating guidelines for such issue, with the slightly chilling line "The company expects cooperation with local authorities and provide the information requested."

It went on to remind us of rules about trveling with confidential information and that it is prohibited - which likely just means you could have your rights violated at the border, then get fired if you did have anything confidential for violating policy

Say it with me - USA! USA! USA!

/snark

I can't believe this is good for corporations, what with all the globalization going on. If they let pawns like you and me take the fall for compromising corporate data, they are the ones who will ultimately lose. Maybe this is a good opportunity to set up a service that temporarily saves data you want to keep confidential that you can download once you get to your destination.....

Hmmmm....see a business opportunity here, anybody??