©meshmar2

Traveling abroad? Want to come back into the country (U.S.)? Own a laptop? Have a business partner coming to the U.S.?

You just might want to re-think traveling with a laptop!

If you haven’t heard, travelers entering the U.S. with laptops or other storage devices could just have the device searched and potentially seized for fear of the traveler entering the country with information that doesn’t comply with U.S. laws. Unfortunately we just don’t know the policies around this — customs officials just haven’t made them public.

If this isn’t stupid I don’t know what is. Business travelers are being asked to somehow transmit company specific information to corporate servers so that they don’t potentially leak sensitive information during a customs search. BUT WAIT! Isn’t this the same thing the average traveler can do to get around customs. There are plenty of network secured file servers out there, free or through a subscription, that would-be-evil-information-movers could use. Maybe Customs should extend their role to that of Internet police. After all information is traveling abroad too.