My response to this is complicated (but I'll keep it short):
* I agree with you that anyone who wants to avoid being effectively searched at a border can and there's little the government can ever do about it.
* I think most of the people carrying (say) child pornography into the country aren't too bright to begin with, so maybe that doesn't matter.
* I remember being very upset about the border search exception when I learned about it 10 years ago. It still bugs me.
* If the principal you're disagreeing with is that the state's interests in a secure border outweigh the individual's right to be free from casual, minimally invasive searches, you should know that you're disagreeing with something like 10+ SCOTUS opinions going back to at least the early '70s.
* If the principal you're disagreeing with is that the 4th Amendment allows judges to fill in the blanks on what "reasonable" means, and that "reasonable" overrides "warrant", know that you're disagreeing with something like 175 years of jurisprudence.
* I definitely agree that electronic searches are nonminimal and highly invasive.
This event, described at the end of the article, does not sound like a "casual, minimally invasive search" to me:
"At an Amtrak inspection point, Pascal Abidor showed his U.S. passport to a federal agent. He was ordered to move to the cafe car, where they removed his laptop from his luggage and “ordered Mr. Abidor to enter his password,” according to the lawsuit.
Agents asked him about pictures they found on his laptop, which included Hamas and Hezbollah rallies. He explained that he was earning a doctoral degree at a Canadian university on the topic of the modern history of Shiites in Lebanon.
He was handcuffed and then jailed for three hours while the authorities looked through his computer while numerous agents questioned him, according to the suit, which is pending in New York federal court."
* I agree with you that anyone who wants to avoid being effectively searched at a border can and there's little the government can ever do about it.
* I think most of the people carrying (say) child pornography into the country aren't too bright to begin with, so maybe that doesn't matter.
* I remember being very upset about the border search exception when I learned about it 10 years ago. It still bugs me.
* If the principal you're disagreeing with is that the state's interests in a secure border outweigh the individual's right to be free from casual, minimally invasive searches, you should know that you're disagreeing with something like 10+ SCOTUS opinions going back to at least the early '70s.
* If the principal you're disagreeing with is that the 4th Amendment allows judges to fill in the blanks on what "reasonable" means, and that "reasonable" overrides "warrant", know that you're disagreeing with something like 175 years of jurisprudence.
* I definitely agree that electronic searches are nonminimal and highly invasive.