There's an article on Slashdot about a US Senate hearing on laptop seizures at border crossings. This affects me, because I travel to Canada a lot and plan to move there within a year or so.

It's a problem because my job requires me to handle what amount to people's medical records as data files on my laptop. It's part of my job, and often I work from home. As of right now, I never take my laptop with me to Canada partly because I don't know what would happen if a border agent decided to inspect or copy all of my data. I can get in very serious trouble for breaching patient confidentiality. On the other hand I could get in serious trouble if I refused to allow a search for myself; at best I'd be turned way at the border, having wasted hundreds of dollars to travel there.

I really don't know what I'm going to do when I move. I'll probably have to wipe my computers clean before shipping them up there. Another option would be to encrypt all the data, upload it to the server that hosts my website, then download it all again after I move. It's insane that I'd have to do such a thing though. And shuffling sensitive data around to strangers' computers and servers isn't the safest thing in the world either.

How do lawyers and doctors and people with trade secrets and other people with classified or legally protected information handle border crossings? It's a bit of a conflict of interest.