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Courts Close the Loophole Letting the Feds Search Your Phone at the Border

reason.com

51–60 of 181 posts

Re: Courts Close the Loophole Letting the Feds Search Your Phone at the Border

#51
post #2

Is this then a done deal? Or can the Supreme Court somehow decide there was a half-sentence in a Federalist Paper which argued the opposite and invalidate the ruling?

A textualist interpretation of the constitution would likely take a very dim view of the federal government trying to stretch its powers and get around the Fourth Amendment. I don’t think we have much to worry about on this topic from the current court.

I think the issue is that suspension of certain Constitutional rights at the border is a reasonable limit on those rights.

Re: Courts Close the Loophole Letting the Feds Search Your Phone at the Border

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They can still get your texts and contacts and call history from your car though. In many cars it syncs Source? If so, that's a privacy boon for CarPlay and Android Auto.

It’s actually the native integrations that do this. Android Auto and CarPlay basically act as a display for your phone and little data leaves your device. Connect via Bluetooth to many vehicles and that data syncs to the car’s infotainment.

> boon

Re: Courts Close the Loophole Letting the Feds Search Your Phone at the Border

#54
post #20

I’m curious, if your phone is locked, were they ever able to demand that you unlock it so they could conduct a search?

They can demand, and you can refuse. However if you have Face ID or other biometric measures, they can (legally) force your finger onto the sensor or hold the phone up to your face to unlock it for their needs. Passwords are personal data, faces and fingerprints are not, apparently.

For Face ID, just close your eyes.

Re: Courts Close the Loophole Letting the Feds Search Your Phone at the Border

#55
post #34

They can still get your texts and contacts and call history from your car though. In many cars it syncs.

Is it possible to enable CarPlay but only for Google Maps? It’s so annoying that it seems to be all or nothing.

It would not really make sense. CarPlay is just your phone using the car’s screen. How would you do that for one app and nothing else?

Re: Courts Close the Loophole Letting the Feds Search Your Phone at the Border

#56
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> textualist interpretation of the constitution would likely take a very dim view of the federal government trying to stretch its powers and get around the Fourth Amendment Scalia was textualist. "Justices Antonin Scalia, Amy Coney Barrett, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch describe themselves as originalists in scholarly writings and public speeches" [1]. (In several cases, e.g. the application of Sarbanes-Oxley to t…

Originalism would also have trouble because phones didn't exist when the Frames wrote or the 18th Century public read the Constitution. Originalism is funny, by the way. By its tenets, if you don't like what the Constitution says, you can pass an Amendment with the exact same words as the Constitution but those words would have new, different meaning.

I'd say the position that "the Constitution means whatever I feel like today" is much funnier.

Re: Courts Close the Loophole Letting the Feds Search Your Phone at the Border

#57

Does this apply only to U.S. Citizens? Or does it apply to everybody? And if it does, is it reason to refuse someone? I.e. can they refuse an L1B visa holder entry because he/she doesn't allow them to search the phone?

It is a pity it does not apply in Australia. They search 40,000 devices a year there, and consfiscate your device if you refuse.

Re: Courts Close the Loophole Letting the Feds Search Your Phone at the Border

#58

> But on Wednesday, Judge Nina Morrison in the Eastern District of New York ruled that cellphone searches are a "nonroutine" search, more akin to a strip search than scanning a suitcase or passing a traveler through a metal detector. Honestly, I would probably rather undergo a strip search than a cellphone scan. There won’t be any incriminating evidence I have forgotten about and everything is done as soon as I leave…

You think that. I was strip searched When that came up with nothing they appeared in front of a judge claiming drug baggies were sticking out of my ass, then I was imprisoned, printed, and loaded up in a prisoner van and dragged to several hospitals while they tried to convince doctors to X-ray or invasively search me. It sounds so insane, and gross, people usually don't believe it. I was sent the medical bills when…

[flagged]

Re: Courts Close the Loophole Letting the Feds Search Your Phone at the Border

#59
post #34

They can still get your texts and contacts and call history from your car though. In many cars it syncs.

> They can still get your texts and contacts and call history from your car though. In many cars it syncs Source? If so, that's a privacy boon for CarPlay and Android Auto.

Here’s one:

https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/09/car_text_harvesting/

Re: Courts Close the Loophole Letting the Feds Search Your Phone at the Border

#60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A textualist interpretation of the constitution would likely take a very dim view of the federal government trying to stretch its powers and get around the Fourth Amendment. I don’t think we have much to worry about on this topic from the current court.

> textualist interpretation of the constitution would likely take a very dim view of the federal government trying to stretch its powers and get around the Fourth Amendment Scalia was textualist. "Justices Antonin Scalia, Amy Coney Barrett, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch describe themselves as originalists in scholarly writings and public speeches" [1]. (In several cases, e.g. the application of Sarbanes-Oxley to t…

Scalia’s originalism—the dominant strain today—is textualism, as explained in the very article you linked. Specifically it is originalism in terms of the original public meaning of the text, or in other words, textualism with the understanding that language changes over time.
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