I believe the author of this article misunderstands the motivations of the judge. This case seems to me to have very little to do with Microsoft and their security updates and everything about the judge wanting to set a legal precedent for future, unrelated cases. If he had ruled that an IP address was P.I.I., it would mean that a person could be found guilty of crimes, held civilly responsible for transactions and a whole slew of other things based entirely on the IP address of the computer that had acted online. Although an IP is a very good clue as to who might have been acting online, it is *only* a clue.

This fails to address either the legitimate need for speedy travel (medical emergencies, birth, etc.) and the possibility of error on the part of the system. If the system is taught that a particular road has a speed limit of 10kph when in reality, the limit is 50, it's going to do nothing but inconvenience people.

An ounce of circumvention is worth a pound of countermeasures. Don't store them on the laptop at all. Store the pictures you're taking online and you'll be able to access them from anywhere. Border patrol can't find something on your computer when it's not there. Even if that's not feasible 100% of the time, you could still make a temporary archive online while removing them from your computer. If even that has you feeling paranoid, you could always burn the files to DVD, wipe them from your computer, and stow the DVD.