Laptops scanned by UK customs

Noel Maddy writes "BBC News has a report that a journalist was a target of a random search for pornography by H.M. Customs on entry into the U.K. Part of the search included hooking his laptop up to something to "scan the drive" -- apparently, it wouldn't work on his Apple computer, though."

This is an unsettling precedent, though. I may be just overly paranoid, but the first image that flashed into my mind as I read this article was trying to leave the U.S and being forced to remove any non-exportable or unapproved cryptography.

Like a lot of people, I keep an awful lot of my personal life on my PalmPilot and my laptop. They've become a surrogate memory for me. This precedent of random invasion worries me.