June 21, 2007

Federal Court of Appeals Considers Legal Status of Laptops

Is your laptop a fancy piece of luggage or an extension of your mind? That's the central question facing a federal appeals court in a case that could sharply limit the government's ability to snoop into laptop computers carried across the border by American citizens. The question, before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, arose from the prosecution of Michael Timothy Arnold, an American citizen whose laptop was randomly searched in July 2005 at Los Angeles International Airport as he returned from a three-week trip to the Philippines.

What's in a Laptop? Court Ponders Legality of Border Searches, Wired News, June 20, 2007.