[jherber]

"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."

The Constitution is our Contract with the Government, and the Judicial Branch our process. Writing your Representative helps, but giving to lawyers who fight and defend the Constitution from overreaching/overreacting Government Officials is equally important and extremely patriotic IMO.

[DanielBMarkham]

I don't want to go political here, but I'd simply remind you that customs has _always_ had the ability to inspect and detain materials crossing the border, whether your personal property or not. It is not unreasonable for the federal government to control materiel moving over the border. There's not even a "reasonable clause" notion here, as a complete and thorough search are asssumed at ports of entry -- otherwise the government would be defrauding the social contract by not being concerned enough about what's happening there.

How else would you run a border? Hey guys, what do you feel like showing me that you're moving? This laptop smells like it has encrypted money on it?

They're not investigating a crime, they're controlling movement. That's their job.

There used to be (and still is, I think) a crime of carrying so much undeclared cash across the border -- whether or not its yours or not. One could argue that the IP contained on a laptop easily could be more valuable than the cash limit, but there are no similar regulations on IP movement. With cell phones becoming e-wallets, seems like it would be easy to walk across the border with a couple hundred k loaded on your cell phone. Strange world, eh?

Encrypt your data and put it in the cloud. Much easier to do than either figuring out what a perfect world would look like or implementing it.

[icey]

$10,000 is the limit for transporting undeclared "financial instruments" across the border.

This can be in the form of cash, certificates of deposit, bonds, stocks, and I suppose anything else that has the semblance of real money (gold, etc).