Recently an article from Scheiner on Security tweaked my interest, as it has many security professionals. I began to research the actual policy and am even more stunned than when I read scheiner’s initial article. It seems that anytime you come in to the country (See Ports of Entry:Here) you are subject to a having your laptop taken,disassembled,illegally accessed, and analyzed. It seems that if you display nervousness(pteromerhanophobia),are attending a defense conference(Defcon),or generally draw the ire of the secondary screening decision man, anything you own will and can be analyzed. The big issue that I have with this process is that it does not take into account the privacy of US citizens. A Border agent should not be able to say “What’s your password” or “Please Enter your Password”, it is almost like asking a person to allow you into is safety deposit box.You put information is a specific safety deposit box so that noone could get it, so why should you allow someone to take everything you have? It absolutely should not be done, what’s more, out of thousands of laptop searches and seizures- the worst punishment anyone recieved from the government provided documents has been a 10,000 dollar fine for copyright violations.
So how do US Customs agency protect their “Right” to search and seize laptops of incoming aliens and US citizens with the following statement

“Aliens have the burden of establishing that they are admissible to the U.S., or are entitled to the immigration status they seek. U.S. citizens also have to establish their citizenship to the satisfaction of the officer and may be subject to further inspection if they are the subject of a lookout record, if there are indicators of possible violations (such as the possible possession of prohibited items, narcotics, or other contraband), or if they have been selected for random compliance examination.”

Wonderful. So if you are wearing a Shirt such as You will be “Randomly Searched”. You Should be fine if you wear this shirt however .

See the statement of the US Deputy Commisioner of Customs here

Edit:Upon further inspection it appears that border agents cannot open or read correspondence contained within letter class mail (See declared policy here). By encasing a laptop in a letter class, sealed, stamped envelope- border agents would not be able to open without a search warrant or your consent.Macbook Airs would be most effective. Anything with the laptop should be classified as correspondence, (I.E. Email,Chats,IM,Pictures,Shared Documents,Collaborative works, etc.)

Note:I have not tried this technique, I am Only observing written policies and court cases (See official policy here