The United States government needs a search warrant to open a flat, letter-class envelope sent from London to Boston. But no warrant is needed if the envelope has a bulge - in fact, the US Customs Service has the power to conduct a warrantless search of any person or object entering the country.
And Customs is increasingly worried about contraband information - be it child porn or pirated software. I ordered a videotape from England in 1994; it arrived in an envelope resealed with green tape declaring "Opened by US Customs." The video had been fast forwarded halfway. The same video would have been ignored had it been sent over the Internet, says Customs import specialist David F. Jones. That's because federal law views information sent into this country by wire as a "nonentry, just like corpses and accompanying flowers."
Congress will want to rethink this distinction. Just as the vast majority of parcels and people entering the US do so through one of 301 authorized entrance ports, most digital data transiting international borders will do so on a high-speed leased line operated by one of the world's leading telecom providers. It would be a simple matter to subject this information flow to random or targeted searches.
Customs could tighten control by allowing international connectivity only via special proxy servers. Encrypted messages couldn't enter unless Customs was given a copy of the key. Small messages identified as correspondence, encrypted or not, might be allowed to pass through uninspected - especially if the service built systems to detect "smurfing" (cutting large files into tiny pieces to escape detection).
Nations have always struggled to preserve the integrity of their borders. It is unreasonable to think that this struggle will abate as we move from the physical world to the digital.
