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

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

#171

Post by ranger_danger »

account42 wrote: post #162
ranger_danger wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not think one bad experience means they are all bad. This trope is perpetuated so often that even mentioning it gets massive downvotes. Popular opinion doesn't always mean they're "right". I think we all need to learn that there are different ways of interpreting things that influence people's opinions, and we should be open to the possibility that we might be "wrong" in someone else's context, myself included.…

> I do not think one bad experience means they are all bad. This trope is perpetuated so often that even mentioning it gets massive downvotes. Popular opinion doesn't always mean they're "right". "Good" cops that stand up for bad cops are also bad. And if there are enough bad apples it doesn't matter if there are good ones as you need to assume whoever you are interacting with is gong to fuck you over.

Those good cops could also be scared of retaliation just like us, and quitting your job over it doesn't help the problem either, so I'm not sure what the right solution is. But I don't think one should automatically assume ill intent.

I have had overwhelmingly positive experiences with police in general and I know many others have as well, and of course I know some with bad experiences too, it's a spectrum of course.

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

#172

Post by ranger_danger »

eurleif wrote: post #9
gamblor956 wrote: post #3

This isn't a landmark case...Courts have been ruling against warrantless border searches for years, see US v Cano (2019), US v Aigbekaen (2019). Indeed, this same federal court has already ruled against warrantless phone searches in US v Smith (SDNY 2023).

US v. Cano: "we hold that manual searches of cell phones at the border are reasonable without individualized suspicion, whereas the forensic examination of a cell phone requires a showing of reasonable suspicion". Neither "without individualized suspicion" nor "a showing of reasonable suspicion" are a warrant requirement. This is not a court "ruling against warantless border searches". US v Aigbekaen is an individual…

I think another problem is that such suspicion/probable cause is often "made up", or in other words, people often disagree on someone's quick judgement call where it wasn't obvious to everyone.

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

#173

Post by ranger_danger »

account42 wrote: post #168
ranger_danger wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even better would be to not even bring a phone in the first place, and get a temporary one after arrival. Or get a prepaid one beforehand with nothing on it, if you're confident that won't be suspicious.

Better at what? Painting yourself into a corner if something goes wrong and you don't have any local contacts that can help you?

Better at not having vulnerable data accessible to anyone that doesn't need it.

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

#174

Post by tracker1 »

qingcharles wrote: post #17
eurleif wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a ruling by a District Court. It could be appealed to the Circuit Court, and then to the Supreme Court. In the federal court system, District Court decisions are not binding precedent. Circuit Court decisions bind the District Courts in their circuit, and Supreme Court decisions bind all lower courts. This District Court is in the Second Circuit. Another District Court in the same Circuit made a similar decis…

Exactly this. (and for those unfamiliar with the terms, in federal courts "Circuit Courts" are the first level of appeals courts, which both sides have a right to be heard in, followed by the Supreme Court which is discretionary and only takes on big cases) When there is a "circuit split" like this, with different appellate courts going in opposite directions you are almost 100% guaranteed SCOTUS has to step in to fi…

With this SCOTUS it's really hard to tell... while they've mostly aligned to state actors, there are a few instances, in particular 2A cases where they've leaned into favoring civil liberties over state actors, so it could really go either way IMO.

That said, my own take has been for a while, that if I travel across borders that I'd specifically buy a burner phone and something cheap like a chromebook, possibly in the country being travelled to and expressly wiped clean before travel if taking said device across the border. Keeping some printed/written notes with contacts that I can establish on the other side.

It's kind of weird in that I don't think the above is excessively paranoid given how intrusive state actors can be, not just the US.

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

#175

Post by herbst »

dheera wrote: post #154
herbst wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People that travel to the US usually want to actually get into the US. Why would they make it hard on themself?

People want to get into the US without having their personal thoughts searched. US citizens also have the right to enter the US without personal thoughts searched.

Nobody I know didn't expect to get searched deeper than they are comfortable with when they planned to enter the US for holidays or travel.

The US is known for giving a fuck about privacy and personal borders. That's literally the one thing they are known for

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

#176

Post by jkaplowitz »

account42 wrote: post #165
jkaplowitz wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but Canada does have its own explicitly entrenched and judicially enforceable constitutional rights document in the form of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which in section 8 provides protection against unreasonable search and seizure. Naturally the US and Canadian judicial systems don’t always interpret these protections to have identical boundaries, but broadly speaking they are similar.

> 8 provides protection against unreasonable search and seizure Doesn't seem to protect you if the government doesn't like your political opinions.

The only government action I think you might mean, the use of the Emergencies Act against the convoy protest occupying downtown Ottawa and its organizers and funding, might mean was in fact ruled by the Federal Court to violate section 8 of the Charter without being saved by section 1, though an appeal is still underway.

That said, as far as I’m aware based on publicly available evidence (not simply speculation), in that situation the government was motivated more by the significant extended disruption from the protest than by the particular political views involved.

What are you referring to?

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

#177

Post by 15155 »

account42 wrote: post #168
ranger_danger wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even better would be to not even bring a phone in the first place, and get a temporary one after arrival. Or get a prepaid one beforehand with nothing on it, if you're confident that won't be suspicious.

Better at what? Painting yourself into a corner if something goes wrong and you don't have any local contacts that can help you?

A new prepaid phone is what, $100? Sticky notes are essentially free.

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

#178

Post by RIMR »

mindslight wrote: post #50
lupire wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but that's insane. You can't legitmizime criminalizing and imprisoning someone for the the crime of not having a time machine. You can legitimize the government making amends for its mistakes.

You do not need a time machine to look at the law as it stands, judge that the legality of an action is unclear, and then prudently choose to not do it. As I said, this is the dynamic everyone who is not a government employee has to deal with, and it encourages a dynamic of staying well away from the edge of the law.

The legality of the action was not unclear. They 100% had the legal authority to search people, or arrest them if they refuse.

These people didn't swear an oath to the constitution, the people who wrote the unconstitutional laws they are enforcing did.

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

#179

Post by mindslight »

RIMR wrote: post #178
mindslight wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do not need a time machine to look at the law as it stands, judge that the legality of an action is unclear, and then prudently choose to not do it. As I said, this is the dynamic everyone who is not a government employee has to deal with, and it encourages a dynamic of staying well away from the edge of the law.

The legality of the action was not unclear. They 100% had the legal authority to search people, or arrest them if they refuse. These people didn't swear an oath to the constitution, the people who wrote the unconstitutional laws they are enforcing did.

Err, what? The constitution is itself part of the law. If a legislative law is ruled unconstitutional, then that legislative law is invalid, and always was. Ergo there was no authority to perform the searches they did.

You seem to be implying a different model under which unconstitutional legislative laws would remain in effect, but the people who passed them would be personally responsible for having gone against the constitution.

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

#180

Post by southernplaces7 »

dxdm wrote: post #146
southernplaces7 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many examples abound. Don't be lazy and do a google search. Granted, many of those opinions that create grounds for legal sanction in the EU are disagreeable ones, but that's how freedom of expression as a real right works, it applies to the shit you don't like or want to hear, not just socially condoned opinions.

> don't be lazy You, too. This is not helping you get your point across, which I'm assuming was the reason you wrote your comment.

Multiple EU countries in the Union as well as the statutes of the EU itself condemn and prohibit a wide range of speech under the grounds of offensiveness. This includes hate speech laws with very broadly defined wording, laws against holocaust denial and laws against speech that is offensive to certain identifiable groups. Misinformation laws are also being formulated. However much you might think that many of the above forms of expression are repulsive (I'd likely agree with you on much of that repulsion by the way), such laws can easily be contorted to include all sorts of censorship. Aside from the censorship, free expression really should absolutely also include legally protected free expression in a public context to espouse views that are repulsive and intolerant too.
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