Ellen Nakashima reports: Criminal defense lawyers, press photographers and a university student are challenging the Obama administration’s search policy permitting officers at U.S. borders to detain travelers’ laptop computers and examine their contents even without suspecting the traveler of wrongdoing. In a federal lawsuit to be filed Tuesday in the Eastern District of New York,…
Tag: DHS
Department of Homeland Security Sued Over Secret Traveller Files
Matt Smith reports: San Francisco travel writer Edward Hasbrouck has sued the U.S. Department of Homeland Security over what he says is the agency’s refusal to give a complete accounting of secret files detailing his numerous border crossings around the world. “This is not something I’m doing lightly, or that I’m doing every day, or…
More domestic intelligence at DHS?
G. W. Schultz writes: The Department of Homeland Security has acknowledged the existence of three more intelligence analysis systems that appear to include information about the American people, according to documents obtained by the Center for Investigative Reporting. Turned over in response to a Freedom of Information Act request first made in December of 2008,…
The PC Privacy Battle at the Border
Richard Adhikari reports: Border protection agents have extensive rights to search electronic devices that travelers take with them through U.S. ports of entry. However, relatively few searches are actually conducted. Border agencies insist they have no interest in holding up legitimate travelers, but civil liberties groups maintain agencies’ policies on searching electronics are too broad…