Quote:
Originally Posted by Phaneuf3
As far as I know, its not legal for the guards to photocopy the entire contents of your briefcase when you cross the border... just in case. If its on your laptop, at least in the states, its perfectly fine and legal for them to make a copy of anything and everything on your drive.
Regarding smuggling: There's only one way to move drugs into the country - physically getting them across the border. Carrying them, shipping them, whatever... something is physically coming into the country. I'll concede your point kinda holds up for the college kid taking a small baggie of weed on spring break but I was thinking more of the drug trafficker.
Also, you have searches going on to ensure a bomb isn't smuggled onto an airplane or the like. No matter how hard you try, you're not going to hijack an airplane with a ripped copy of Pirates of the Caribbean.
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I have seen border guards photocopy all manners of documents that people carry with them across the border. If they suspect, for instance, that you may be working illegally they will take copies of your documents for further investigation or to support their allegations. Among those may be letters from your lawyer to you which should be confidential and protected by solicitor client privilege (or similar privileges in the USA). As far as I know, there is nothing that says it is illegal to make copies of documents in that manner.
I think what is getting people's dander up, aside from the civil liberties mumbo jumbo, is that this is an afront to a different kind of privacy interest. Canadian law recognizes different privacy interests and protects them to different degrees. Interests that go to the core of who you are are on a different level than others. The law does not permit cavity searches as frequently or with as little scrutiny as it does a pat down search, for instance.
You have a greater interest in the stuff up your butt and in other crannies than you do the stuff in your suitcase tossed willy nilly beneath the airplane.
The stuff on your laptop represents a greater sense of you than the stuff in the suitcase. There is an informational privacy interest there that many feel is worthy of a greater degree of protection.