Leave Your Laptop At Home
Forget the embarrassment over dirty underwear: if you travel internationally with your laptop, its contents may be searched at the border when you return to the U.S., same as your socks.
Writing for the ABA Journal eReport, STEVE SEIDENBERG reported on a July 24, 2006 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Even if your computer files are encrypted, or if you are just using your laptop as a portal to access your home office's VPN, Customs can ask for your passwords or PGP keys. (Same would hold, one must assume, regarding your USB thumb drives, removable zip drives, etc.)