Customs and Border Protection conducted 2,272 searches of travelers' electronic devices from Oct. 1, 2009 through April 30, 2010, according to a newly released report from the Homeland Security Department's privacy office.

Of those searches, 673 were of laptops, a number that DHS says affected 0.0184 percent of the 3.7 million travelers referred to secondary inspection at a border crossing during that six-month period.

DHS reserves the right to search the electronic device of any traveler without cause during a border crossing and the power to hold onto electronic devices for further searching while a traveler is otherwise free to continue onward. DHS counts as a "search" anything from a request to turn the device on as a means of ensuring that it is what it purports to be, to a full-fledged examination involving temporary confiscation and possibly the wholesale duplication of data on an electronic device.

The American Civil Liberties filed suit against DHS Sept. 7 in a federal district court in an effort to get the searches declared unconstitutional. Border agents should at least suspect a traveler of wrongdoing before subjecting their electronic devices to search, the ACLU said in a blog post at the time.

For more:
- download the report, "DHS Privacy Office, Annual Report to Congress: July 2009 - June 2010" (.pdf)

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