If your Hard drive could testify

[Lorn]

Any comments on this from the [MS] legal team?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/07/us/07bar.html?ei=5090&en=d0caa6c9bacf76ed&ex=1357362000&adxnnl=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1199714806-NZ2agd4Kikkv8hShxGsvKg&pagewanted=print

[Miroslav]

Re: If your Hard drive could testify

maybe the lesson is keep your porn at home and don't travel with it!

[toasty]

Re: If your Hard drive could testify

I can kinda understand the rationale, but that's still troubling. With that said, in this day and age, things are maintained in digital form more and more, and I'm not sure there's a practical difference between searching your bag, and looking at files on a laptop.

Here's the problem as I see it, though. My understanding, and it could be entirely wrong, is that when border agents or customs agents search you, it is to determine whether or not you are bringing prohibited items into the US, like Cuban cigars. You're not going to find a Cuban cigar on a laptop, and there's nothing that you can transport via laptop that you couldn't couldn't just as easily transmit electronically, so the search of a laptop would fall somewhere between pretextual and wholly inefficient at meeting its stated objective.

I suspect there's something in the Patriot Act that allows these sorts of searches, though. Call it a hunch.

I don't really have a strong opinion on it, as you can tell.