Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border

Post by sandworm101 » Sat, Aug 22, 2026, 10:52 PM UTC

guax wrote: post #814

sandworm101 wrote: post #674

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not guilty sets no legal precedent. For that, he needs to be found giulty at trial (no plea bargains) appeal that conviction, and then have an appelate court declare that a mistake was made. I would not wish such a process on anyone.

A precedent is set every time an issue is judged for the first time. If you have any prior case of someone being found guilty or not for this exact case, that would be the precedent. If there is none, then this will set it, including appeal results.

Post by phendrenad2 » Sun, Aug 23, 2026, 12:47 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #630

phendrenad2 wrote: post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Law enforcement are underpaid, overworked, and they aren't even respected anymore. A lot are fine, but a lot of people are ending up there because they can't get any other job [1]. I don't think these attacks on freedom are always malicious, I think a lot of it is people in law enforcement who aren't capable of understanding the not-so-subtle difference between "law enforcement" and "law authority". [1] - See stories…

So far as I can tell --- and someone challenged me on this recently, saying they'd been in court over a case related to it, so take this with a small grain of salt --- this "too high IQ" thing happened once, in New London CT, and if that's really the only documented case you have to wonder whether it wasn't just New London making an excuse for why they didn't hire someone they just didn't like the vibes of. I can say…

Post by antonvs » Sun, Aug 23, 2026, 1:38 AM UTC

KoolKat23 wrote: post #759

antonvs wrote: post #742

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UDHR is a non-binding declaration - in and of itself, it has no legal force. The 4th Amendment of the US Constitution is more legally relevant, but part of the function of courts is to carve out exceptions to laws like that for law enforcement purposes, so practically speaking such provisions are much less absolute than their wording tends to imply.

Generally you can't carve out from a constitution, it is all encompassing. You can reinterpret perhaps but "carve outs" are only by amendment to the constitution. It's a concept called constitutional supremacy. There's generally ranking to laws. Think of a venn diagram with subset circles inside bigger circles. Constitutional Law > Statutory/Legislative Law > Administrative/Regulatory Law > Case Law/Common Law

Post by abustamam » Sun, Aug 23, 2026, 2:07 AM UTC

mrcwinn wrote: post #825

raluk wrote: post #726

From Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) accepted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948 -------- Article 12 No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-de…

Was this arbitrary?

Post by thrawa8387336 » Sun, Aug 23, 2026, 2:35 AM UTC

formerly_proven wrote: post #428

tavavex wrote: post #97

I'm not a legal expert, but all this seems to check out with US law. Americans need to remember that some of their constitutional rights don't really apply at ports of entry by design. This inconvenient truth for the land of the free has existed for a long time, this situation is just drawing attention to it. Their powers are far-reaching.

The US / common law jurisdictions typically only have very light self-incrimination protections. The 5th amendment in the US only protects against self-incriminating testimonial. That's it. In most other jurisdictions (i.e. civil law) it's perfectly legal for the accused to destroy evidence (assuming you're not committing any other crimes in doing so, like breaking and entering, property crime etc.), seizure being or…