[I am not a lawyer] My sister-in-law (the defense attorney) would say that you can look if you have probable cause, and then get a warrant for more invasive looking and/or looking elsewhere. But reading the judge's remarks in the article it does not sound like the judge believed they had enough cause to seize the laptop. I hope this goes to the Supreme Court because I would hope they would rule in favor of the 4th amendment on border seizures for laptops. It offends me as a tax payer and a voter that this is allowed and every year and twice on every election year I inform folks who would seek to be my representative that landing in favor of the 4th amendment will help to secure my vote.

That said, I've always been curious (but insufficiently brave) to create a 'bait' laptop which would be a laptop designed to exfiltrate video and audio of everything that goes on around it into a cloud server. Then tweet in passing I finally got some juicy bits and head off on an international jaunt to provide a seizure opportunity.