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US border agents can search your laptop or phone

Guardan You might have thought that US border controls were simply focused on keeping out the likes of Lily Allen and Amy Winehouse, who might well reduce the entire country to rubble (OK, they recanted). But some companies now have a different issue. According to The Washington Post, Radius has now "tightened its data policies so that traveling employees must access company information remotely via an encrypted channel, and their laptops must contain no company information." ... The Post quotes Mark Rasch, a technology security expert with FTI Consulting and a former federal prosecutor: "Your kid can be arrested because they can't prove the songs they downloaded to their iPod were legally downloaded," he said. "Lawyers run the risk of exposing sensitive information about their client. Trade secrets can be exposed to customs agents with no limit on what they can do with it. Journalists can expose sources, all because they have the audacity to cross an invisible line."

Full post as published by The Trade Secrets Vault on February 09, 2008 (boomark / email).