According to the Washington Post, US Federal Agents may now detain your laptop at the border for an indefinite period of time, and — get this — without any reasonable cause whatsoever:
The policies state that officers may “detain” laptops “for a reasonable period of time” to “review and analyze information.” This may take place “absent individualized suspicion.”
The policies cover “any device capable of storing information in digital or analog form,” including hard drives, flash drives, cellphones, iPods, pagers, beepers, and video and audio tapes. They also cover “all papers and other written documentation,” including books, pamphlets and “written materials commonly referred to as ‘pocket trash’ or ‘pocket litter.’”
Federal agents may take a traveler’s laptop computer or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.
Perhaps I just read the US Constitution too literally, but this strikes me as a clear violation of the 4th Amendment. See if you agree:
Amendment 4 - Search and Seizure. Ratified 12/15/1791.
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Considering that a laptop may, in fact, contain your “papers and effects,” it seems reasonable to expect that the seizure and inspection of your laptop without due cause would violate the 4th Amendment. Sadly, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit disagrees. According to the same article from the Post, that court upheld the right of the Gummint to take your laptop at the border without reasonable cause.
It seems pretty clear to me that we need someone with a big legal team and lots of money to test these regulations with a laptop drive encoded with something like TrueCrypt or PGP. Upon refusing to hand over your keys to the drive to some bumbling border agent, what would happen? Would you face “extraordinary rendition” to some Eastern European or Middle Eastern country where you’d be tortured for your password? Would you have to go back to where you came from? Would you be denied your rights of citizenship in the US? Would you become a person without a state?
The above notwithstanding, does anyone actually think this is going to deter any terrorism or whatever it is that the US is actually afraid of? I’d say that it would prevent only the most amateur of terrorists from getting information across the border. It is trivially easy to encrypt a file and email it to someone, or to put it on a server somewhere, and download it from just about anywhere in the world. No one actually needs a laptop, flash drive, iPod, cell phone, or whatever to get information anywhere. Thus, I’m not sure that this regulation actually accomplishes anything at all, except providing a pretext for the government to deepen its control and surveillance of us.
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This is ridiculous, makes me happy that I live in Canada - but who knows how long it’ll be before we adopt the laws of our neighbor.
see, there’s your problem: assuming the constitution still means anything after this clusterfuck of an administration
Now would my summer pics of me, and Osama Bin Hidin’, water skiing together off the coast of Florida that I keep on my laptop as a wallpaper, would that give them probable cause to not only seize it, but then make me a ‘person of interest’ for the terrorist watch list?
This is complete bullshite! And the fact that one would have to have a large legal team backing them in order to get the government to act in accordance with our laws and constitution is yet another sad testament to the bastardization of democracy that our nation has become, and it’s people have been frightened into accepting. I completely agree with your take, and don’t think it’s hard to see at all that this move is blatantly unconstitutional. Though that hasn’t stopped this administration yet.
Thanks for posting about this, I hadn’t seen it. Good to know that the government’s still dependable. I count on them to consistently disappoint and let me down completely!
This is like going to a train station shooting everyone in sight in the foot, in order to catch one escaped prisoner. The people who do want to get information past the border have smarter methods than that.
It makes me sad too, but at the same time… I’m not sure why anyone is surprised that we are ignoring the constitution in cases like this. Consider our track record at this point…
- We are torturing people and then using the “evidence” gained on their “trials”
- Denying people due process by holding people without any formal charges and not allowing them any way to fight for their freedom
- Spying on american phone conversations, emails, etc
Keep in mind these are just some of the things we know about. Yeah, its sad… but not a surprise.
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