curious wrote in message
...
I've seen people who try to take their laptops onto a plane as carry-on
get
stopped by security at the gate. The security guard asks them to boot up
the
laptop, and then they insert some sort of device into the laptop
(presumably
into the USB port or something). What exactly does this device do, and is
there a possibility of a virus being transmitted from the device into the
computer?

You haven't seen this in the US, or at least not since post-9/11 random gate
checks were stopped over a year ago. I've also never seen this in Europe or
Asia.