PHOTOGS SUE TO BLOCK BORDER SEARCHES OF THEIR LAPTOPS

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on Tuesday challenging a U.S. policy that now allows customs officers to search the content of laptops and other devices of persons arriving from abroad even if a traveler is not suspected of wrongdoing. The lawsuit was brought on behalf of The National Press Photographers Association, whose members include both print and TV photographers. The group says that the search violates their First Amendment rights and exposes them to the possibility that the government might copy confidential information from their laptops. In a statement, Catherine Crump, a staff attorney with the ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, remarked: “Innocent Americans should not be made to feel like the personal information they store on their laptops and cell phones is vulnerable to searches by government officials any time they travel out of the country.”