Border Laptop Search bill...in September. What's the point?

By
Andrew
on September 17, 2008 1:05 PM | | Comments (251) | TrackBacks (0)
So around the middle of July there was a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on laptops being searched at the border by Customs. Witnesses had concerns over the scope of searches, sometimes with the laptops not being returned. The Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., was not pleased.

But there is now a bill pending that would require some accountability from DHS...introduced on the House side by Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-California. H.R. 6869 would require reports to Congress by DHS and impose some limits on the searches. But the Courts have already ruled that laptop searches are constitutional, so what's the point? Ars Technica sums it up:

Sanchez's bill would bring more routine to the search process. The bill requires the government to draft additional rules regarding information security, the number of days a device can be retained, receipts that must be issued when devices are taken, ways to report abuses, and it requires the completion of both a privacy impact study and a civil liberties impact study. Travelers would also have the explicit right to watch as the search is conducted.
It's September. The House adjourns at the end of the month unless they recess "subject to the call of the chair," effectively ending the 110th Congress and letting the campaign season go nuts. The Senate will probably hold pro forma sessions, as has become the practice, with a local, either Ben Cardin, D-Md., or Jim Webb, D-Va., gaveling the Senate to order before recessing, only to avoid recess appointments by President Bush.

So what's the point? Over 40 groups wanted this bill months ago. Why nothing?

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