U.S. federal agents have been given new powers to seize travelers’ laptops and other electronic devices at the border and hold them for unspecified periods, the Washington Post reported this morning.

Under recently disclosed Department of Homeland Security policies, such seizures may be carried out without suspicion of wrongdoing, the newspaper said, quoting policies issued on July 16 by two DHS agencies.

Agents are empowered to share the contents of seized computers with other agencies and private entities for data decryption and other reasons.

Full story and source: Reuters

This entry was posted on Friday, August 1st, 2008 at 5:23 am and is filed under Security, Technology, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.  Both comments and pings are currently closed.