Border agents seize couple's laptop for containing gay porn

What's next....

[link to www.xtra.ca]

"We didn't think there would be anything other than the normal questions, but there was," Rick says. "They went through our entire truck. They did not go through our toiletries, which we were surprised about, but they opened up the laptop, and I guess one of the icons said 'porn' on it."

While the gay men watched, a CBSA agent sat in their truck and poked through the contents of the laptop. When he ran into locked material, he got the passwords from them.

Rick and Shawn say that, in retrospect, it was a slapdash search. The laptop was combed, but not their cell phones, Shawn's Blackberry, or the loose burned CDs in the truck's glove compartment.

The CBSA officers went into their office. Time ticked by as Rick and Shawn pondered what to do next.

About an hour later, a CBSA officer came back with bad news.

"He came back and said 'We're going to have to confiscate the laptop.' I asked why. He said it had 'questionable material,'" says Rick.

The "questionable material" was gay porn. In particular, the CBSA officer pointed to a video that showed light watersports. The pair's video collection wasn't any more racy than the videos you can buy at porn shops in Canada, they say.

Among the movies on their laptop were home videos of the couple having sex.

According to those close to the CBSA, it not an uncommon story. And as the Supreme Court of Canada has pointed out in the Little Sister's bookstore case, porn that would be perfectly legal to make, sell and possess in Canada is often stopped at the border. Academic papers, fictions, letters and correspondence, bootlicking pictures, family photos — it can all get you in trouble.


In Iran it's a death sentence...