MONTREAL – Pascal Abidor was taking an Amtrak train from Montreal to visit family in New York on May 1 when he was handcuffed, held in detention and had his laptop seized and searched by United States border agents.
It took him 11 days and a letter from the American Civil Liberties Union to get his computer and external hard drive back, but he still has no idea how the information, including personal correspondence with his girlfriend, will be used.
“I was deeply frightened and also enraged about this major invasion of my privacy,” said Abidor, a 26-year-old McGill University graduate student. “I couldn’t believe this had happened to me.”
He is now one of the plaintiffs, along with the National Association of Defence Lawyers and the National Press Photographers Association, suing the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to have policies regarding electronic equipment changed.
“We’re asking the court to establish rules that they have to show they have reason to believe that a search of a laptop will turn up evidence of wrongdoing,” said Catherine Crump, a lawyer with the ACLU.
“In many ways, (laptops) are an extension of our lives, so these searches are highly intrusive.”
Policies introduced a year ago by two arms of the Department of Homeland Security say such searches can be conducted “with or without individualized suspicion.”
Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents can “search, detain, seize, retain and share electronic devices or information contained therein” with or without such suspicion.
There is no limit to the amount of time such gadgets can be held by agents.
Sensitive and confidential data-like legal or privileged information, journalists’ sources and medical records – can all be viewed, copied and shared with other agencies.
In an email, U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesperson Matthew Chandler said he couldn’t comment on “pending litigation.”
But he said such searches are carried out in “limited circumstances to ensure dangerous people and unlawful goods do not enter our country.”
The suit, filed Tuesday in Brooklyn, N.Y., is challenging the constitutionality of the policies, saying they violate the right to freedom of expression and the fourth amendment, which prohibits unreasonable search and seizure by the government.
Abidor, who is doing his Ph.D. in modern Shiite history at McGill, responded to border agents’ questions by saying he was in Islamic Studies and he had briefly lived in Jordan and Lebanon. He was led to the café car, where an agent opened his laptop and perused the contents, stopping at photos of Hamas and Hezbollah and asking why they were on his laptop.
“I gave them reasonable, rational and truthful explanations,” said Abidor, who has French and U.S. citizenship.
He was then frisked, handcuffed, placed in a cell, questioned, fingerprinted and photographed before being released three hours later.
When his computer was finally returned to him 11 days later, he noticed the casing of his external hard drive had been damaged and several of his files, including those containing tax information, had been opened by agents.
“I have no idea how the information is going to be used,” he said.
When Abidor flew later in the summer from London to the Newark, N.J., airport, outside New York, he was detained and searched again. According to the suit, agents seemed to have inside information about Abidor, questioning him about the last time he was stopped, about how he pays for his travels, about his girlfriend and Ph.D. and whether he was Muslim.
The suit says that between October 2008 and June 2010, more than 6,500 people – 3,000 of them U.S. citizens – crossing a U.S. border had an electronic device searched. Between October 2008 and June 2009, CBP kept more than 220 electronic devices carried by travellers. Between July 2008 and June 2009, CBP transferred information found on electronic devices to third-party agents 280 times.
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