Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Court: Suspicionless Searches of Travelers’ Phones and Laptops Unconstitutional

aclu.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 617 posts

Re: Court: Suspicionless Searches of Travelers’ Phones and Laptops Unconstitutional

#371

Post by stevenwoo »

namdnay wrote: post #151
umvi wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why is airplane security different than other contexts? Because hundreds of lives are at stake, unlike (most) other contexts like screening college applications or work visa applications. > That's not the real world. There have been white terrorists, christian terrorists, etc. Are you saying terrorists happen at equal frequencies across all demographics? There have been Christian terrorists, yes, but those strike m…

> There have been Christian terrorists, yes, but those strike me as exceedingly rare compared to Muslim terrorists In the USA??? I think the opposite is true. How many terrorist attacks have you had on US soil this year, and how many of the perpetrators identified as Christian vs Muslim?

Almost all of the abortion clinic bombers and shooters are self proclaimed Christians in the USA, as are most white supremacists - responsible for many attacks on synagogues in the USA including the recent Pittsburgh shooting. Also, Timothy McVeigh was targeting the large number of African Americans he saw working or in childcare at OKC federal building to try to start a "race war".

Re: Court: Suspicionless Searches of Travelers’ Phones and Laptops Unconstitutional

#372

Post by [deleted] »

umvi wrote: post #77
knodi123 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> why is profiling bad in context of airplane security? Why is airplane security different than other contexts? > 100% of airplane terrorist attacks are carried out by people of X country (Xians), and 0% of airplane terrorist attacks are carried out by people from Y country That's not the real world. There have been white terrorists, christian terrorists, etc. There have been muslim terrorists from most countries. So…

> Why is airplane security different than other contexts? Because hundreds of lives are at stake, unlike (most) other contexts like screening college applications or work visa applications. > That's not the real world. There have been white terrorists, christian terrorists, etc. Are you saying terrorists happen at equal frequencies across all demographics? There have been Christian terrorists, yes, but those strike m…

[deleted]

Re: Court: Suspicionless Searches of Travelers’ Phones and Laptops Unconstitutional

#373

Post by waterheater »

velosol wrote: post #233
bureaucrat wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. If the magistrate fails to notice the illegal-ness of the evidence and gives the warrant, it is valid nonetheless.

If the illegal-ness later comes to light would a court consider evidence from the 'valid' warrant tainted? Always, sometimes?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree

In the specific case you're talking about, always.

Re: Court: Suspicionless Searches of Travelers’ Phones and Laptops Unconstitutional

#375

Post by waterheater »

_Codemonkeyism wrote: post #366
EpicEng wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may recall a certain war faught against the British...

The UK was a tyranny at that time? How would you define tyranny then?

A general definition is "oppressive power."

A tyranny must be recognized. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolution

"The Continental Congress declared King George a tyrant who trampled the colonists' rights as Englishmen..."

If you recognize a tyranny but do nothing, you stand to receive further oppression. Consider the case of the PRC. The CCP is tyrannical toward those they rule; we plainly see this reality from our perch of liberty. However, unless the Chinese people recognize the tyrannical nature of the CCP, they'll continue receiving oppression. Making this realization harder is the PRC's surveillance apparatus and the population's indoctrination. I wish them luck.

Re: Court: Suspicionless Searches of Travelers’ Phones and Laptops Unconstitutional

#376

Post by cies »

So a govt agency does something illegal. To be honest, im not thrilled. They seem to be acting against the laws they claim to uphold all the time.

Do they get punished? Are they put under extra monitoring now?

This is not a democracy people, this is not "trias politica". Police brutality rampant, this merely being one more case. These court rulings seem rather useless, when the same govt keeps illegal torture prisons (Guatanamo) open, where people's lives are ruined without due process.

Re: Court: Suspicionless Searches of Travelers’ Phones and Laptops Unconstitutional

#377

Post by waterheater »

bsimpson wrote: post #374

It makes me really sad that it took a court case to decide this.

Drafting a law would be worse. Smartphones have only been around for 12 years, so no good law could have been passed because we did not fully understand how the smartphone would shake out.

It took time because society needed to reckon with the newfound implications brought by such profound technological shifts.

Freedom doesn't come from a drive-thru window. You have to wait at the table until the issue has cooked.

Re: Court: Suspicionless Searches of Travelers’ Phones and Laptops Unconstitutional

#378

Post by dang »

kpU8efre7r wrote: post #143

And that, ladies and gentleman, is the awesome side of the USA.

Please keep nationalistic flamebait off HN. Also, could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments? You've done it repeatedly lately and it's not what this site is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Court: Suspicionless Searches of Travelers’ Phones and Laptops Unconstitutional

#379

Post by simonh »

briandear wrote: post #329
Pyxl101 wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the old days, it was routine for customs officers to search ships coming in to harbor, including the effects of their passengers, to enforce importation laws Yes, but electronic devices can't digitally contain physical substances that might be subject to customs laws. It's not comparable. It's probably still today reasonable to search ships in the harbor and passengers for physical substances (like banned animal…

> Yes, but electronic devices can't digitally contain physical substances that might be subject to customs laws Child porn is prohibited to be imported in any form, including digital. Customs isn’t about just physical objects.

Of course not, but there is a degree of proportionality here. In theory a person's personal diary, letters, chequebook etc could contain evidence of crimes. However it's generally not been considered appropriate to read through them during a customs search.

The rights granted under the constitution were provided explicitly under the knowing assumption that they could be used to conceal actual crimes or criminal intent. That's the point of them needing protection from the authorities. The mere possibility of committing a crime isn't enough grounds to invade a person's privacy to that degree. You need actual reason to suspect it in an individual case to go that far.

Re: Court: Suspicionless Searches of Travelers’ Phones and Laptops Unconstitutional

#380

Post by simonh »

undoware wrote: post #361
hannasanarion wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aside from all the arguments brought up so far, there's that word "unreasonable" which the courts have historically interpreted with an "expectation of privacy" standard. You have a high expectation of privacy when you're in your house, somewhat less when you're in a car, and much less when you're entering an airport or crossing a border. In the old days, it was routine for customs officers to search ships coming in…

"In the old days" is just Argument from Tradition. We also used to treat infectious disease as demonic possession. Next argument, please.

Looking at how a law has been implemented in the past is a basic legal principle. The reason for it is to provide context as to the intent and proper way to interpret a law, in order to ensure continuity and consistency in it's application. The idea is that, all other factors being equal, continuity and consistency are desirable.
Post reply on HN