First off, I want to make this disclaimer that I do not condone illegal activity. However, as an American, I am disgusted by the US government which insists on searching laptops and cameras that travelers are carrying. These searches do not involve looking for terrorist information or high-tech top secret state secrets, but for photos of naked women.

I feel that customs should be searching for items such as weapons, drugs or other truly malicious items and not waste time looking for photos of naked women. As well, in their search for nude ladies they ultimately stumble across your private personal information that is on your laptop. Im certain that George Washington would have never approved of such insidious searches by government authorities. I personally feel violated when the government reaches new lows by searching through your personal documents and pictures to see if there is any pornographic content on the camera.

Finally, there are several "what-if" type questions that I have. What if you go to a foreign country and conduct yourself in a legal manner. You hire a prostitute that is 21 years old and go out of your way to ask her age and check her identification. However, in the photos, she appears to some to be slightly younger then 18. Then you go back to the US and come upon an overzealous female customs agent having a bad day who finds that X-rated photograph of you with that young-looking (but legal) woman...you can see how this can get out of control very fast. There have been many times in the past where innocent people have been arrested for crimes they did not commit and later were found innocent through DNA or other evidence. Its not unthinkable to be wrongly arrested in today's age.

Therefore, I make this post so as to inform how you can protect your privacy from the prying eyes of government authorities and to avoid misunderstandings that can and do occur, but again, Im not saying you should break the law.

The answer to all this might be to upload the photos to a website and make an attempt to delete everything on the laptop (which may or may not work because they do have programs that can undelete things;) For those of us using 12+ megapixel cameras and taking 300-400 pictures in one trip uploading might take a very long time to accomplish.

However, another answer might be to utilize a very small picture card that will make your personal business more discreet.

I found this very small sim-card that is designed for a cell-phone camera. This is the most amazing thing I have ever seen. 8 gb can be contained on this very small card.




(Message edited by Portege on September 02, 2008)

All.. You can read the CBP's policy regarding border search of information which specifically addresses the search of electronic media such as laptops, memory cards, etc..

Here's the link right from CBP's website..
http://www.cbp.gov/linkhandler/cgov/travel/admissibility/search_authority.ctt/search_authority.pdf