You are not safe at US Customs

Read:

• http://www.boingboing.net/2011/01/12/wikileaks-volunteer-1.html

What it shows is that you should NEVER EVER bring electronic gadgets to the US. They would be paranoid and be all over you.  You are better off properly setting up a SECURE SSH server and then use computers and internet available to SSH in to your server and work there.

Obviously the agents weren't happy when they found nothing. They were expecting to find a huge trove of juicy items..... some exciting challenges like an encrypted volume with AES 256 on it with a RSA 4096 key and all the good jazz (especially for the computer forensics guy who love nerdy challenges) so that they could do rubberhose cryptoanalysis on Jacob to find out the decryption keys.

They couldn't even extract the Bill of Rights from the portable device Jacob was carrying.

The best case is to totally avoid travelling to the US for a holiday or if there are business contracts, it's better off using conference calls than to travel there to avoid all the hassle if possible.