After two of its executives had their laptops and other electronic devices seized and searched at U.S. airports in May, BAE Systems PLC — the U.K.-based defense and aerospace giant — found itself facing a travel risk that many companies had never considered: that U.S. officials could search, inspect and copy data from international travelers’ electronic devices without a warning or warrant.
For BAE, the searches signaled an escalation in the Justice Department’s high-profile, yearlong investigation into allegations of foreign corrupt payments. For the rest of the international business community, they signaled what may be a new trend in law enforcement. With increasingly global companies and increasingly portable technology, these searches would let the government access any data that travelers bring across the border on their laptops, BlackBerrys, cellphones or other electronic devices — without warrants, probable cause or reasonable suspicion.
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