Search And Seizure

It may surprise many air travelers, but your laptop and its contents are far from secret at the nation's international airports. Increasingly, this is prompting new privacy concerns for business travelers. Customs and Border Protection agents have the authority to search and seize laptop computers belonging to travelers entering the United States, those of U.S. citizens and foreigners alike. And they use it.

A civil rights group sued the federal government Wednesday on behalf of five Latino U.S. citizens who say they were detained and harassed by agents carrying out raids targeting illegal immigrants in south Georgia. The Southern Poverty Law Center said that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents used "Gestapo-like" tactics as they fanned across three Georgia counties in September, breaking into homes and stopping people in their cars "because they looked 'Mexican.'

A significantly larger amount of classified information from a nuclear weapons laboratory in New Mexico was discovered in a residential trailer during a police search on Oct. 17 than was disclosed by law enforcement officials, sources close to the investigation said Wednesday. The search turned up a number of copies of classified documents from Los Alamos National Laboratory in the trailer park where a former employee lived.

Los Angeles police detectives had been trailing a serial murder suspect for about a month during the summer of 2003 when they finally got their needed break. Adolph Theodore Laudenberg, then 77, thought police wanted to question him as a witness in an unrelated car theft case and agreed to meet with an LAPD investigator at a Torrance doughnut shop. As they talked, Laudenberg sipped coffee out of a Styrofoam cup and occasionally paused to wipe his mouth with a napkin.

Los Alamos National Laboratory, one of the nation's key nuclear weapons research centers, confirmed Wednesday that it experienced a potentially major security breach -- discovered last week when police found three laboratory computer drives during a drug arrest at a New Mexico trailer park. Police reports released Wednesday identified the owner of the trailer, where officers found a sizable amount of drug paraphernalia associated with methamphetamine use, as Jessica Quintana.

Federal authorities are investigating the handling of classified information by a Los Angeles scientist who works for the aerospace giant Boeing. Though the FBI would not comment on the probe, spokeswoman Laura Eimiller confirmed that agents served three search warrants within the last two months at the Valley Village home of Abraham Lesnik. The warrants remain under seal.

Five months ago, the FBI touched off a legal and political firestorm when it raided the office of Rep. William J. Jefferson after wads of marked $100 bills were found in the Louisiana Democrat's freezer. Now, with major questions about that search still unsettled, the right of investigators to gain access to lawmakers' documents and computers is shaping up as a key battleground in the sex scandal probe surrounding former Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.).

A task force charged with policing probationers arrested a convicted drug trafficker Friday and seized 10 illegal weapons and a cache of ammunition. The arrest and seizure of Armen Sarafian, 21, was made by Los Angeles County DISARM officers and the La Verne and Claremont police departments. Among other items, the task force confiscated an AK-47 assault rifle and a Colt AR-15 rifle.

Police will resume inspections of bags on public trains, buses and boats in the greater Boston area for the first time since the city held the Democratic National Convention in 2004, Gov. Mitt Romney announced Thursday. Romney, a Republican considering a 2008 run for president, said that the inspections for explosives were not a response to any immediate threat, but that police recognized transportation systems were vulnerable to terrorist attacks. "We are facing a very different threat.

Armed federal agents in blue windbreakers and business suits raided the office of the Riverside Sheriffs' Assn. on Thursday, an action that comes as the FBI investigates the use of the association's legal trust fund. Officials at the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's office refused to discuss the investigation, but an agent involved in the raid at the Riverside office park was seen carrying a search warrant that included the last name of the sheriffs' association president, Pat McNamara.