If U.S. border agents ask to search your laptop, here’s what to do

Lawyers' Forum

By Trisha M. Rich and Lisa M. Kpor

Trisha M. Rich is a professional responsibility attorney and commercial litigator at Holland & Knight LLP. Lisa M. Kpor is a litigation attorney at the firm. They can be reached at trisha.rich@hklaw.com and lisa.kpor@hklaw.com. Follow them on Twitter at @_trishrich and @L_M_Kpor

Posted August 10, 2017 1:18 PM

On July 25, the New York Bar Association Committee on Professional Ethics issued what appears to be the first ethics opinion on how lawyers should handle requests to have their electronic devices searched by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.The opinion, New York City Bar Association Committee on Professional Ethics, Formal Op. 2017-5 (2017), is available here.While the possibility of having electronic devices searched at the border still remains low, incidents of such searches have nearly doubled in first six months of …

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