\nThe question, before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, arose from the prosecution of Michael Timothy Arnold, an American citizen whose laptop was randomly searched in July 2005 at Los Angeles International Airport as he returned from a three-week trip to the Philippines. Agents booted the computer and began opening folders on the desktop, where they found a picture of two naked women, continued searching, then turned up what the government says is child pornography.<\/p>\n
In June 2006, a judge from the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California threw out the evidence, finding that customs officials must have at least “reasonable suspicion” to begin prying into the contents of an electronic storage device, a decision the government is now appealing.<\/p>\n
“Electronic storage devices function as an extension of our own memory,” Judge Dean Pregerson wrote. “They are capable of storing our thoughts, ranging from the most whimsical to the most profound. Therefore, government intrusions into the mind — specifically those that would cause fear or apprehension in a reasonable person — are no less deserving of Fourth Amendment scrutiny than intrusions that are physical in nature.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Border agents have, traditionally, had the right to bypass that whole Fourth Amendment thang as part of “border security.” But are there reasonable limits on that? Can other rights be similar trammeled? It’s one thing to search luggage — another thing to force folks through body cavity searches? Where do personal electronic repositories fall in that? If the border agents made a backup of every laptop and cell phone that crossed the border, without any court order, would that be okay? If not, then why allow them to search a single laptop without reasonable cause.<\/p>\n
Interesting stuff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A lot of folks consider their cell phone, PDA, even their laptop, as an extension of their personal being, the same as their home or their diary. That makes border…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-homeland-security"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":50802,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/05\/09\/all-your-laptop-may-not-belong-to-us.html","url_meta":{"origin":10831,"position":0},"title":"All Your Laptop May Not Belong To Us","author":"***Dave","date":"Sat 9-May-15 6:44pm","format":false,"excerpt":"A federal court has ruled that border agents may not willy-nilly search whatever the hell they want, at least when it comes to electronics.That's a good thing. Court rules search of businessman's laptop at border 'unreasonable' A federal court has ruled that the government's search of a traveling businessman's laptop\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":128544,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2015\/11\/04\/your-laptop-is-not-just-a-container-legally-at-least.html","url_meta":{"origin":10831,"position":1},"title":"Your laptop is not just a "container" (legally, at least)","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 4-Nov-15 11:36pm","format":false,"excerpt":"A judge has ruled that laptops are more than just crates and cargo that can be willy-nilly seized and searched -- without a warrant -- in the border zone or at international airports. Rather, based on SCOTUS precedent, they can be presumed to hold so much private information that a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":40264,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2014\/01\/01\/all-your-computers-are-belong-to-us.html","url_meta":{"origin":10831,"position":2},"title":"All your computers are belong to us","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 1-Jan-14 2:59pm","format":false,"excerpt":"A judge rules that border searches of computers and phones, for any (or no reason) whatsoever, are perfectly legal because (a) they have obviously (though not in publicly presented evidence) been important in preventing Many Horrible Terrorist Acts, and vaguely handwaved \u00a0Evil Terrorists allow any and all rights to be\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":32485,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2013\/02\/10\/all-your-electrical-devices-are-belong-to-us.html","url_meta":{"origin":10831,"position":3},"title":"All Your Electrical Devices Are Belong To Us","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 10-Feb-13 11:57am","format":false,"excerpt":"The DHS concludes, no surprise, that it would be a burden to have to actually have a \"suspicion\" they can point to before taking any electronic device you cross the border with -- laptop, smart phone, dumb phone,\u00a0thumb drive, anything -- and searching through it for Anything Suspicious (or, maybe,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":136210,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2018\/05\/04\/assault-and-statistical-battery.html","url_meta":{"origin":10831,"position":4},"title":"Assault and Statistical Battery","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 4-May-18 7:18am","format":false,"excerpt":"Apparently it's easy to show a surge of \"assaults\" against Border Patrol agents when you change how you count assaults to a method that nobody else uses but that gives you much, much higher numbers. How the Border Patrol Faked Statistics Showing a 73 Percent Rise in Assaults Against Agents\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/border-patrol.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":18440,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2010\/09\/07\/unblogged-bits-tue-7-sep-10-1731.html","url_meta":{"origin":10831,"position":5},"title":"Unblogged Bits (Tue. 7-Sep-10 1731)","author":"***Dave","date":"Tue 7-Sep-10 5:31pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Links (most recent first) that caught my eye, but did not warrant full-blown blog entries .... NM Corrections Secretary Refusing To Penalize Contract-Breaching Private Prison Company He Used To Work For - But remember: deregulated privatized public services are good! (For their stockholders!) Montana Tea Party Leader Fired For Advocating\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Lord of the Rings \/ Hobbit"","block_context":{"text":"Lord of the Rings \/ Hobbit","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/media\/franchises\/lord-of-the-rings"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10831\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}