At issue was a guy who, upon returning from South Korea, had his laptop searched and the inspectors found alleged child porn. The way the picture was described sounded more like an artistic shot to me, but there are other peculiar circumstances about the guy's behavior during his interview with Customs. So they seized his laptop. And it wasn't searched again for another six months.
The judge ruled, basically, that the first search did not require a warrant, but the second search many months later did.
I think the best solution was suggested by a comment to the original article: blank laptop, VPN connection.
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-20007315-38.html http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/06/10/198234/Federal-Judge-Limits-DHS-Laptop-Border-Searches