We've all heard the mental and physical health reasons why it's good not to take your work with you when you need a real vacation. Now National Law Journal offers you another reason: customs officials may seize your laptops and cell phones and compromise the security of your work product:
As lawyers, we may recall that under the "border search" exception to the Fourth Amendment, courts routinely allow government searches at U.S. ports of entry without any reasonable suspicion or probable cause. In the words of the Supreme Court: "Time and again, we have stated that searches made at the border, pursuant to the longstanding right of the sovereign to protect itself ... are reasonable simply by virtue of the fact that they occur at the border." United States v. Flores-Montano, 541 U.S. 149, 152-53 (2004). Notwithstanding various civil rights groups' longstanding objections to this practice (which the ACLU says endorses "Constitution-free zones" at the borders), the stakes are only getting higher as the bounds of the electronic search itself progress with technology.
