New legislation will give sweeping powers to border patrols in the US to seize laptops, i-Pods in case of suspicion of illegally obtained media. The Department of Homeland Security claims that such regulations will make it easier to prevent terrorist activities. However civil rights groups have expressed reservations, saying that the laws will lead to violation of privacy and undue harassment.

The new legislation will form part of the Anti Counterfeiting Trade Agreement and is expected to be in place by the end of 2008. The laws under this international agreement will allow random search and seizures of electronics like laptops which are suspected to engage in illegal file-sharing or other forms of copyright infringement. The enforcement agencies will also be authorized to destroy such illegal material at their discretion or share them with other agencies for reasons like data decryption and language translation.

On July 16, two agencies of the DHS, the US Customs and Border Protection as well as US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, had been allowed to exercise many of these provisions. However, the ACTA agreement will give a more formal framework to the new laws. Here it may be mentioned that while the policy makes has to safeguard confidential information relating business interests and client-attorney material, they do not provide any protection of personal data like medical records or financial information.

-Kalyani Mookherji