This is nothing new. As stated in the decision “It is well-established that the sovereign need not make any special showing to justify its search of persons and property at the international border.” In other words, when you enter the country, the border officials can search all of your property and do not have to provide any kind of reasonable suspicion. This is the case in most countries.
The issue in this particular case is whether the scope of border search doctrine allowed the government to remove the laptop that had not yet been cleared to another place to enable it to be searched. The answer is yes. It does not mean that the border agents do this with every digital device carried but in this case there was a special alert that came up when the laptop owner's name was put in the computer at border control because this person was a convicted paedophile. The alert informed the officer to be on the lookout for child pornography and the border official was told by his supervisor to search anything that could contain evidence of child pornography (in 2007 a computer was seized from this same person with 360 images of this man abusing a 7-10 year old girl). But, again, border officials have the right to search anything at the border. Once you have been cleared for entry, then they cannot search without reasonable suspicion. (Case reference:
http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastor...0/09-10139.pdf)
As a rule, it is never a good idea to tick off a border agent in any country in the world.
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