Privacy vs. border security: Critics say laptop searches cross the line

Diverse groups, including Muslim associations, law firms and corporate and technology organizations, increasingly are concerned about the search and seizure of laptops and other electronic devices at borders, saying such scrutiny raises privacy issues and could compromise lawyer-client privilege and corporate confidentiality.

Jawad Khaki, a corporate executive from Sammamish, was returning home from a business trip to Ireland and Germany last year when a customs agent at the airport asked him to turn on his cellphone.

He already had told the agent in detail where he had traveled and why, so when the agent began looking over the to-do list and calendar in his phone, Khaki was shocked.

"It was an invasion of privacy," he said. "I thought it was going too far."

Khaki's story joins what seem to be growing numbers of similar reports from people — many of them Muslims or of Middle Eastern or South Asian descent — who say that their laptops, cellphones or other electronic devices were searched or seized at airports or U.S. border crossings, and that they've been questioned extensively.