As we were preparing to travel to Lahore for a family wedding, we kept talking about the risks associated with new executive orders that might be issued in our absence and how they would impact us. Well, here we go. Our flight route is JFK to Doha to Lahore, and back. We carried our laptops with us on the way here, just a few days ago, and now we’ll have to check them into our luggage on our way back. After reading tweets of despairing journalist friends in the Middle East, Laleh Khalili’s thoughts are that the laptop ban is not about protectionism, or a stealth #MuslimBan, or related to “security.” It’s about providing security services access to the data on people’s laptops, which will now be sitting comfortably in checked luggage.