The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Amendment IV, Bill of Rights, United States Constitution

I’m hardly a constitutional scholar, but it seems pretty clear that the government doesn’t get to search your stuff without a damned good reason. And after watching the explanation as to why you should never talk to the police without a lawyer even in you believe you’re snow white and free of crime, I don’t understand why more people are kicking up a sh*t storm about Homeland Security’s flagrant violation of our fourth amendment.

That’s not true; I do understand. We’re cowering in a corner, hoping to not be the one chosen for tasering by power crazed government authorities this week. With 25 million Americans expected to travel overseas this summer, you might need to rethink what you pack.

For more than 18 months now, Homeland Security has been intermittently seizing the electronics of Americans re-entering the nation to cruise through their Blackberry data and personal files on their laptops. While some border agents perform these searches in front of the products’ owners; others retain the items to copy the hard drives and data sets for later review, telling travelers the information will be deleted after being reviewed. (After the last 8 years, do you trust the government?).

“Right now, [DHS] seems to believe that it can hold anything it wants from your laptop, BlackBerry, or cellphone indefinitely,” says Susan Gurley, executive director of the Association of Corporate Travel Executives in Alexandria, Va. “There are no limits on what they can do with it or whether they can share it with any third party.” (Christian Science Monitor)

Imagine your laptop being seized and held for several MONTHS. The official line is that these searches weed out terrorist and child pornographers. How many wannabe terrorists and child porn fetishists has Homeland Security caught in the last 18 months? I haven’t heard about any arrests, have you?

The blanket policy covers most of the electronics and documentation you could possibly to travel with.

The policies cover “any device capable of storing information in digital or analog form,” including hard drives, flash drives, cell phones, iPods, pagers, beepers, and video and audio tapes. They also cover “all papers and other written documentation,” including books, pamphlets and “written materials commonly referred to as ‘pocket trash’ or ‘pocket litter.’

Given our reliance on electronics in the business word, blanket access to our private files is incredibly dangerous and a violation of our privacy.

“A laptop can hold [the equivalent of] a major university’s library: It can contain your full life,” says Peter Swire, a professor of law at Ohio State University in Columbus. “The government’s never gotten to search your entire life, so this is unprecedented in scale what the government can get.” (Christian Science Monitor)

Accordingly, some Americans are starting to question the reach, and point out protections against searching one’s intellectual property without cause. After all, Homeland Security doesn’t have the authority to intercept first class mail.

A policy that allows for “random seizures” of your private property is practically an invitation to further harass people on the government’s sh*t list, which is pretty much anyone who stands up for the Constitution and human rights. With the terror watch list cruising past one million names, the latest search mandate perpetuates the instilling of fear among American citizens, who might otherwise question the increasing infringement of American civil liberties.

Professor Duane of Regent University points out that there are roughly 10,000 laws Americans can be prosecuted for breaking. Are you absolutely positive you haven’t inadvertently broken one? One that can be traced back to you? Do you have a single pirated song on your iPod? And, if you’re a budding Naomi Wolf or Vincent Bugliosi, that stray track might be enough to get you arrested, and serve as warning to your activist compatriots. Even better if you’re a nobody, because then the US government can make an example of you quickly and without a prolonged legal battle most Americans can’t afford.

What can you do? Daily Kos offers a number of suggestions:

• Sign the petition, demanding an assessment of this policy’s effects on American privacy guaranteed by the constitution.
• The Electronic Frontier Foundation tells you which elected representatives you can contact to voice your opinion.
• Tell you elected representatives to support H.R. 6702, the Securing our Borders and our Data Act, which precludes searches sans suspicion and demands the regulation of how data will be reviewed and stored by Homeland Security.

In the interim, Machinist blogger Denise Caruso shares a computer security expert Mark Seiden’s suggestion to protect your data.

“Leave everything on a server, encrypted.” That way you don’t have to carry it across the border, and as long as you know you’ll have a network connection, you can get to it once you get where you’re going. This protects travelers not only from overzealous customs agents, but makes losing a laptop or having it stolen a mere inconvenience, rather than a security nightmare.