It's probably the same mind set of your employer. I recently asked a well-respected security wonk who's worked for some of the biggest companies and government institutions in the United States how many of them read their employees' e-mail and/or snoop on their Web browsing. His answer? All of them. Not that they read everyone's e-mail all the time, but if your name comes into suspicion, you can expect somebody is reading over your shoulder (though odds are you won't know about it until well after the fact).

He also says in three out of four cases someone gets disciplined or fired; the other 25 percent turn out to be clean.

I am not a lawyer, for which the American Bar Association should be offering Hosannas on high, but: The legality of most privacy violations in this country are based on the question of whether someone in that situation has "."

At most workplaces, you do not have a reasonable expectation of privacy. That's why you probably pass under the watchful eyes of security cameras when you enter and leave the cubefarm. But even this has limits. When a trucking company in California tried to put cameras in its bathrooms because it thought employees were doing blow in the toilet, it got flushed by the courts. (The .) Even at work, you have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the crapper.

If you've done nothing wrong, I think you should have a reasonable expectation that the private contents of your laptop remain private, regardless of what border crossing you happen to be at. I believe when you use the Web, you should have a reasonable expectation your search histories won't end up on a server at the DOJ or the NSA. And I certainly believe when you send your daughter to school, you have a reasonable expectation she won't get strip searched and humiliated for no reason.