EFF to 4th Circuit: Electronic Device Searches at the Border Require a Warrant

Miranda was a kidnapper and rapist. Danny Escobedo (right to an attorney during interrogation) murdered his brother-in-law. Clarence Earl Gideon (right to a court-appointed attorney) was a career criminal. It's the same with freedom of speech cases: they often involve jerks and assholes; otherwise, they probably wouldn't have gotten arrested in the first place.

You can root for the right outcome without rooting for the defendant.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.vaed.55...

It's a tough call. On one hand, the feds were really reaching by singling out the defendant for inspection based on:

1) a vague notion that South America is a higher risk of CSAM and sex trafficking (the government's CBP witness couldn't even say that that background CSAM rate in the countries the defendant had traveled from was higher than in Virginia, the state of the defendant's port of entry), and

2) a vague FinCEN report that there was some unspecified payment activity between the suspect and an account or accounts believed to be of underage individuals.

On the other hand, the defendant consented to the initial search after being read a miranda warning and signing a waiver, and did in fact have a pattern of catfishing victims to get them to send CSAM. He also had banned coca products (doesn't sound like cocaine, probably just coca leaves or something) that they were citing him for.

I'd like to think the feds or any LE should need some reasonable suspicion of a particular crime before investigating them for that particular crime. I don't think they had that. This wasn't a generic border search and enhanced questioning (to find out if there was anything specific worth investigating).

I think the judge was lazy in concluding that the search was justified, and wanted to leave it to appellate courts to exclude evidence if it meant letting the defendant go.

Is the current state of the law really that anyone who within the last few years ever transferred any money to a minor, and happens to be coming from any country outside the 1st world, is subject to an inspection and initial cursory search of digital devices for specific illegal material because it's "Look for CSAM month"? I find that difficult to believe, and appalling if true, regardless of any crimes that were uncovered.

> Q Do you have any particular training in child exploitation?

> A Yeah. I've taken a few trainings.

This line[1] encompasses places even as far inland as Columbus, Ohio, and Columbus, Georgia, which are good examples of being perhaps least border-feeling, non-coastal cities that I've ever spent time in.

I wouldn't blame anyone for having never visited the grand metropolis of Fort Wayne, Indiana, but that's within 100 miles of the line, too.

Lots of other unlikely cities are this way are this way as well.

[1]: Here's a map on ArcGIS. I only found it; I did not have any part in creating it: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/mapviewer/index.html?webmap=f43e...