The much larger threat is what happens when a government (or its leader) considers itself above the law. Say you have a President that's willing to politicize the Justice Department. That would make searches like these even more threatening. You might find yourself the object of these searches because you don't belong to the right party.
Your iPod being an electronic device, it might be seized and/or copied.

Everything in government is political.

True, and like what was said before, it can all be stored at a remote server as well and copied later as well. The point being, it is easy to bypass this law.

Reminds me of a story my brother just told me about my dad. He was at the Los Angeles airport and realized his military pistol was in his bag. He bought a plastic bag, buried the gun in a large planter, returned from his trip in about a week, and dug it back up. That was my dad all over. :P

That being true, this law is untenable.
A law that needs to be bypassed by normally law abiding citizens is an unjust law.

It's really worse than that CWT -- it breeds a contempt for that particular law that's infectious. Making laws that are easy to circumvent or easy to get away with if broken invites a scofflaw attitude -- normally law-abiding folks ignore it. If you don't get a ticket for parking in a handicap parking spot or worse yet in a mall's fire lane, not only will you continue to do it, but others, seeing that it's without penalty will do it too.

I sat in a legal parking spot in New Hampshire store lot one time waiting for my wife complete her shopping while I finished a novel. During what would have been 40 minutes or so, 13 cars parked in the clearly marked handicapped zone directly in front of me, and not one of them had a handicapped sticker or gave any discernible evidence of being handicapped themselves. Neither did any of them get a ticket. Clearly in Newington, New Hampshire, it's open season on parking in them.

Making a law like the one we're discussing simply makes a lot of folks aware of how to circumvent it and to avoid the hassle, most folks do.

True, and a President willing to politicize the Justice Department is a direct threat to our Democracy. Terrorists become trivial matters at that point.

either you have a 'res publica' government that tries to serve its citizens, or you have an authoritarian government that tries to control its citizens. you can't tell by the words it uses (for instance, govs often talk about 'protecting' their citizens, which could mean that they are actually trying to protect citz, or might mean they are trying control citz under the guise of serving them...). you have to look at what they do. here we have a law that allows the government at its whim to intrude deeply into the personal lives of any citizen (because we all know how much personal information is on our computers) without any measurable or significant benefit of protection. does that strike you as an actually or as an under the guise of?

@ tw & cwt; We run the risk of having this discussion go off the rails (or get banned) if it evolves from a "this is a crummy law" to government-in-office bashing.

I've been careful not to name names. ;) The law is a serious threat to National Security no matter who is in office.

I don't frankly care who's in office; I'd give the same critique. however, only the government-in-office gets to make policy. it's a bit disingenuous to talk about hit and run accidents in a town where only one person owns a car... ;)

This is the second time you have brought this up, cwt. You are violating community guidelines in bringing in politics. So rather than argue the point, I am signing off this thread.

Laws aren't written in a vacuum. The cumulative affects of this law combined with other laws and actions go far beyond unnecessary searches. I brought up the same concern the second time because I felt that pointing out other significant problems would narrow the focus on one political group.
That isn't just incorrect, it's a cop-out.

I flew from Tokyo (Narita) to San Francisco in February. At the time I had a shaved head and a rather unruly beard...and to this day I have more pigment in my skin than most. I brought a laptop, iPod, and probly still stank of green bud. I left and arrived via SFO with no problems...no delays...not a hitch.

TSA, although sporting a new moniker and clothes, is the same hodgepodge of retirees and students who took the "airport job" because of the pay/perks/ease-of-job...very rarely has someone applied to the TSA to fight the war against terror. If someone was serious about that they'd enlist in the army.

IMO the laptop seizure program was more likely spawned by the lobbyists of the RIAA and/or MPAA. No, I don't wear a tin foil hat. The government knows that dangerous data is available online...and they have programs to address that (CARNIVORE? shhhhh).

This law was passed under the guise of child porn, bomb recipes, and other things that make your hair stand on end. My guess is that it's either MP/RIAA inspired...or worse yet, a modern version of COINTELPRO.

1. Seize the laptops of your enemies
2. ????????
3. profit