[HN Gopher] Fifth Circuit: Law Enforcement Doesn't Need Warrants...
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Fifth Circuit: Law Enforcement Doesn't Need Warrants to Search
Phones at Border
Author : latexr
Score : 36 points
Date : 2023-08-25 21:32 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.techdirt.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.techdirt.com)
| tiahura wrote:
| 0 expectation of privacy at an international border. This has
| been the law since King Narmer and should surprise no one.
| olliej wrote:
| Where do you live in the US? If you are within 100 miles of a
| coast or border, you're "at the border" and these rulings
| apply.
|
| 2/3rds of the US is at such a border, and thus any CBP officer
| can perform a warrantless search of anyone without even the
| suggestion of any kind of probable cause. I'm honestly
| surprised we haven't seen police report anyone suspicious to
| the CBP in the knowledge that that gives them a direct bypass
| for any illegal search they want.
| gottorf wrote:
| That doesn't mean any and all treatment at a border crossing is
| legal. Would you not object to an anal probe administered by
| CBP?
| tiahura wrote:
| I wasn't giving my opinion. IAAL, I was giving you the law.
| wolfram74 wrote:
| And the general thrust of pointing out things like this is
| to discuss whether or not the law is wrong. As laws are
| made and enforced by societies, it is entirely possible
| that they might need to be changed by those same societies
| as their needs and ethical standards change.
| Y_Y wrote:
| And would they object if I insisted on one, being in the
| "border zone"? This has to be a two-way street.
| xen2xen1 wrote:
| But the amount of information on you they can get from your
| phone expands significantly every year. The founding fathers
| defined search and seizure as your house, which had your
| papers, banking documents, money, now all that is online and
| viewable with a fingerprint anywhere you are.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| They define the border as 100 miles. Do you think that is
| reasonable?
| tiahura wrote:
| Me personally, 100 miles, probably not - most of the time.
|
| In Criminal Procedure, many law professors skip this section
| of the book (a bunch of drug cases) and summarize the caselaw
| with "you have no rights at the border."
| solveit wrote:
| And this includes the coast. NYC, SF, LA, DC etc are all
| within the border zone.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| Considering
|
| How easy it is to store data online, securely and anonymously,
| and access anywhere in the world; and
|
| How important cell phones are for critical communications, multi-
| factor authentication for websites, and airline/transportation
| needs,
|
| It is nothing short of stasi to be searching cell phones at the
| border without specific cause.
| throw0101b wrote:
| Reminder that the "border" (zone) is / can be considered 100 mi
| (160 km) inland:
|
| * https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone
|
| * https://elibrary.law.psu.edu/pslr/vol124/iss2/3/
|
| * https://ballsandstrikes.org/legal-culture/border-patrol-100-...
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception
| [deleted]
| Tostino wrote:
| A.k.a pretty much the entire state of FL.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| What I don't understand, and perhaps I'm trying to apply logic to
| things that are outside of it :
|
| The ostensible reason the border officers have these powers is to
| protect the country. We don't want undesirable types allowed in
| (let's defer the fun of defining the undesirable types:).
|
| But... This feels like "real time process". You let somebody in
| or you don't. How does confiscating the phone and keeping it for
| _five months_ aid in this? Is the assumption that any evil deed
| would take 6 months to execute? And that if we discovered
| something bad on the phone, five months later we 'd have an easy
| time catching the owner?
|
| Basically,in which twilight universe is searching a phone off
| line for months part of border security prerogatives?? Is it not
| obvious to everybody involved that this search is for purposes,
| good bad or ugly, other than border protection? How is this not
| even addressed in any of these articles or rulings?
| ericfrazier wrote:
| Has this policy ever saved a life or stopped a terrorist
| olliej wrote:
| Having the information, and even being explicitly told by
| friends and family _in advance_ has not stopped attacks.
|
| Hell, in Uvalde we saw that law enforcement won't even do
| anything during an attack that is killing kids.
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2023-08-25 23:00 UTC)