This is simply incredible. DHS (Department of Homeland Security) agents have been given powers to seize any electronic equipment from travelers, regardless of whether or not the traveler is a citizen of the United States of America. The seized items can be held for unspecified period of time, contents of seized items may be shared by other government agencies and even "private entities for data decryption and other reasons".

According to this article DHS has had this power for some time now, and has only been forced to disclose this publicly only after being pressured by civil liberties groups as well as business travelers.

For clarification, items that may be seized could be any of the following: laptops, memory-sticks/pen-drives, digital cameras, ipods, video and audio tapes, mobile phones, pagers, books, "pamphlets and other written materials".

Overlooking the obvious violations of 4th Amendment and civil rights, can you imagine what sort of an impact this may have on private business enterprises, especially in the technology age with Intellectual Property (IP) at stake?