In the United States, the ninth circuit held that the Fourth Amendment does not require government agents to have reasonable suspicion before searching laptops or other digital devices at the border, including international airports. The legal details and write up written by Jennifer Granick a lawyer for the EFF can be found here.
What I wonder is does that apply to encrypted volumes that may be present on a laptop? My laptop contains all my data related to my customers on an encrypted volume. That encrypted volume also holds all my bookmarks, e-mail, and web browser cache. The operating system and applications are not encrypted (yet), and assuming the officers searching my laptop were savvy enough to find the encrypted volume, I am wondering if I am required to give them my pass phrase to access the encrypted volume?
I probably would give it to them. I don’t have anything illegal and it is probably easier to just cooperate then end up being added to some list that would make future travel difficult or impossible. I just wonder where the law sits on this issue.
