Court Approves Airport Laptop Searches - No Probable Cause Needed
All of the contents on a laptop can now be searched without wrongdoing or suspicion from U.S. Customs agents according to a recent federal appeals court ruling (PDF).
This ruling comes about after 43-year-old Michael Arnold was returning to Los Angeles from the Philippines and was selected for the secondary questioning by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. During the search and questioning, one official asked Arnold to turn on his laptop and then handed the laptop off to another customs agent. The other customs agent looked into a pictures folder and found what was believed to be child pornography. The customs agents seized the computer, but let Arnold go. Two weeks later federal agents obtained a warrant for Arnold's arrest.
In the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Arnold argued that a laptop is different from other types of closed containers in regards to customs searches. He compared laptops to the human mind and a home based on the capacity size of laptops and the personal link one has with a laptop that is different than luggage and other types of "closed containers."
Despite Arnold's attempts, the court ruled that no suspicious is needed for a border search and a laptop is no different that a piece of luggage, despite the arguments that suggested that a laptop is "an extension of ourselves."
This opens up pandora's electric box for search by U.S. customs agent. The ruling also makes cellphones, MP3 players, digital cameras and other electronic equipment available for search at will by customs agents. This only makes me wonder if the RIAA will soon team up with the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol to catch people traveling with illegal MP3s. At least we're still safe on the Internet.
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Stalin and Hitler would be proud of this new America. Giving up our right to privacy for a false sense of security is ridiculous. Remember it's easy to give up our freedom, but it is near impossible to get it back.
> only makes me wonder if the RIAA will soon team up with the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol to catch people traveling with illegal MP3s.
Well, this must be the ultimate absurdity from the anti-DRM whackdoodles and wingnuts. Child pornography is sacrosant intellectual property, but artist-owned music isn't.
redofromstart --
It has nothing to do with the content of the device and everything to do with Constitutional rights.
Only a whackdoodle or a wingnut would fail to understand this.
TrueCrypt. http://www.truecrypt.org Need I say more?
God Bless America. Er , I mean God Save America. I know God talks to President George,and maybe God told George to open up laptops.
Easier than grabbing stone tablets .
If however George is doing it to combat those Terrorists , then why are they concerned with alleged porn.
Truly Uncle Joe and Adolf would have loved to get their hands on
a person's private information so easily ,
No search warrant required, no Habius Corpus ,detention without
trial, no bloody rights left at all apparently.
>It has nothing to do with the content of the device and everything to do with Constitutional rights. Only a whackdoodle or a wingnut would fail to understand this.
You should have gone to your Constitutional Law class more often. The Constitution protects against unreasonable searches and seizures; the courts have consistently held that border searches aren't. Customs can search everything and anything they want to (except your "alimentary canal") and always have been able to. This case is nothing new; it just extends well-established law to computers. You can find the opinion and the case law all over the web: I'm not going to do your work for you.
That's just plain stupid.
You might as well have Customs searching the Internet then (yeah, they do that too) for all the good it will do them.
If I lived in a foreign country and wanted to bring some illegal data into the U.S. I would simply store it on a server somewhere and then transfer it once inside the U.S.
Searching laptops is just another method our government is using to intimidate and harass just as the Gestapo or some defunct Eastern European country enjoyed.
Regardless, I suppose you would approve of waterboarding those who enter the country with encrypted drives -- that's "legal" also. Or so Bush would like everyone to believe.
Our country is turning into the things it once opposed and our citizens are just passively bending over to facilitate that change.
Make sure you carry Vaseline with you.