From EFF:
Our lives are on our laptops – family photos, medical documents, banking information, details about what websites we visit, and so much more. Thanks to protections enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, the government generally can’t snoop through your laptop for no reason. But those privacy protections don’t safeguard travelers at the U.S. border, where the U.S. government can take an electronic device, search through all the files, and keep it for a while for further scrutiny – without any suspicion of wrongdoing whatsoever.
For doctors, lawyers, and many business professionals, these border searches can compromise the privacy of sensitive professional information, including trade secrets, attorney-client and doctor-patient communications, research and business strategies, some of which a traveler has legal and contractual obligations to protect. For the rest of us, searches that can reach our personal correspondence, health information, and financial records are reasonably viewed as an affront to privacy and dignity and inconsistent with the values of a free society.
Read more on EFF and download their free guide by Seth Schoen, Marcia Hofmann, and Rowen Reynolds.
You can also take a self-quiz on border searches and sign a letter to DHS to clarify policies and procedures. I signed the petition after editing it to reflect that as a health care professional who may have to take patient data with me when I travel, I am very concerned that people could just demand access to those data without any protections or probable cause. If you’re concerned, too, why not take a moment and do something for yourself – sign the petition.