Posted on 04/19/2010 7:41:31 AM PDT by markomalley
Federal security workers are now free to snoop through more than just your undergarments and luggage at the airport. Thanks to a recent series of federal court decisions, the digital belongings of international fliers are now open for inspection. This includes reading the saved e-mails on your laptop, scanning the address book on your iPhone or BlackBerry and closely scrutinizing your digital vacation snapshots.
Unlike the more common confiscations of dangerous Evian bottles and fingernail clippers, these searches are not being done in the name of safety. The digital seizures instead are part of a disturbing trend of federal agencies using legal gimmicks to sidestep Fourth Amendment constitutional protections. This became clear in an April 8 court ruling that found admissible the evidence obtained by officials who had peeped at a passenger's laptop files at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston.
According to court documents, FBI agents had identified an individual suspected of downloading child pornography on an Internet chat room. The G-men, however, did not want to take their evidence before a judge to obtain a search warrant, as the Constitution requires. Instead, they flagged the suspect's passport and asked officials at the Department of Homeland Security to seize and search his computer at the airport - without a warrant. Three incriminating images were found during the examination, but this case is not about whether a particular person is a scumbag. It's about abusing a principle that applies to all Americans.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Thousands Snooping About
It is my understanding as well that they can simply seize your “imported” materials and can deny you entry if you do not supply the password.
Not exactly new
Borders are one of the places that the 4th Amendment does not protect individuals; as well as things such as searching persons when they are arrested & exigent circumstances, & plain view.
The standard for when the 4th Amendment applies is if there is an expectation of the right to privacy. (And there is no right to privacy in the Constitution, though it implied with the narrowly defined rights in the Bill of Rights. The concept came from later Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis and his 1890 article in the Harvard Law Review) At international borders, there is no expected right of privacy.
If you don’t like it, work to change the law, but it isn’t new.
I doubt it will change for the better.
It’s a good thing PortableApps makes it easy to purchase their product. /S
They may try but first they have to get past my password.
Same here. After returning home from a trip, I dumped out my purse looking for something else when I saw the pocketknife and nearly fainted. It was given to my by my grandfather and would have died had it been confiscated. I couldn’t believe I forgot to remove it from my purse PRIOR to flying. I went through security 6 times on that trip.
America -- a great idea, didn't last.
This has nothing to do with an “implied” right to “privacy” — it’s a gross violation of the explicitly stated right to be secure in one’s person, papers, and effects.
TrueCrypt can be set up with two layers — one password for expendable “secrets” in the outer layer, another for real secrets in the inner layer.
Not at the international border.
ditto
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