This comes from the Andre Durand Blog, during a presentation he was in recently he heard this from someone that knew what he was talking about.
He said that if you are an American executive, traveling abroad, you should assume that if your laptop leaves your control, (in customs for example), that the hard drive has been mirror’d. He said this is especially true if you are traveling through France but that it should apply to many foreign countries. Corporate espionage, and specific targeting of well known US executives traveling abroad should be ‘assumed’.