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Court: Suspicionless Searches of Travelers’ Phones and Laptops Unconstitutional

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

#71

Post by calibas »

csours wrote: post #17
ISL wrote: post #2

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized." Sounds like the Court got it right.

I suspect you may know this, but there exist many locations and circumstances wherein various rights are suspended. https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone

Saying "rights are suspended" is a very nice way of putting it. Sounds more legit that way than what I call it, "the government breaking it's own laws".

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

#74

Post by fenwick67 »

ryandrake wrote: post #26
thisisnico wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do these suspicions require some sort of preliminary-evidence of those suspicions before acted upon?

Reasonable suspicion must be based on rational inferences from specific and articulable facts, as opposed to just a hunch.

Sadly I fear officers in this scenario will probably just find a "furtive gesture" or "smell of marijuana" equivalent to point to.

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

#75

Post by mattr47 »

papito wrote: post #68
strictnein wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's no more or less disturbing for journalists to be subjected to this. They're not some special class of protected people.

Their phones can expose sources that depend on discretion, and it's not farfetched for some MAGA TSA agent to ratf--k a journalist.

This has being going on well before the current presidential administration. Try not to get triggered next time.

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

#76

Post by saagarjha »

umvi wrote: post #63
cdmcmahon wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll (possibly inaccurately) assume this is in good faith. The most obvious reason that profiling is bad, even in your inaccurate and simplistic hypothetical scenario, is that just because all airplane terrorist attacks came from people of X country, does not imply that everyone from X country commits terrorist airplane attacks. Therefore you are unfairly and immorally forcing invasive searches on many innocent peopl…

> Therefore you are unfairly and immorally forcing invasive searches on many innocent people of X country. If you have any empathy for the innocent people of X country, you will realize how horrible this is. Okay, we are talking about an extra 5 minutes of scrutiny, not cruel and unusual punishment. I don't think it's really that "horrible" to make people from countries with bad track records jump through some extra…

> Okay, we are talking about an extra 5 minutes of scrutiny, not cruel and unusual punishment.

5 minutes if you decide to go along and reveal your entire digital life to the TSA.

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

#77

Post by umvi »

knodi123 wrote: post #57
umvi wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unpopular opinion: why is profiling bad in context of airplane security? If 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 (Yians), it seems like a pointless charade of political correctness to check Xians and Yians with equal frequency. I say profile the heck out of Xians. Stop and frisk 100% of Xians an…

> 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 me as exceedingly rare compared to Muslim terrorists, for example.

Why would you ever stop and frisk a family? Has a terrorist attack ever been carried out by a couple with children in the history of the world? Or even just gender profiling - how many terrorist attacks are carried out by women vs. men? Men should be scrutinized much more frequently than women; it's simple statistics.

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

#78

Post by enraged_camel »

knodi123 wrote: post #57
umvi wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unpopular opinion: why is profiling bad in context of airplane security? If 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 (Yians), it seems like a pointless charade of political correctness to check Xians and Yians with equal frequency. I say profile the heck out of Xians. Stop and frisk 100% of Xians an…

> 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?

Presumably because the margin of safety for optimal aircraft operation is a lot thinner, and there's a high likelihood that a catastrophic failure results in everyone on board (usually several hundred people) dying.

In comparison, a regular train derailing (e.g. via a bomb, or whatever) isn't going to be as disastrous.

Edit: why the downvotes?

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

#79

Post by lonelappde »

strictnein wrote: post #60
papito wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are cases of doing this to U.S. Citizens, in some cases, quite disturbingly, to journalists .

It's no more or less disturbing for journalists to be subjected to this. They're not some special class of protected people.

On the one hand, it's extra bad because searching a journalist leads to an additional violation: freedom on the press.

On th other hand, we should not think of 1A rights as rights that only specialists or professionals need.

(Much like we shouldn't think of police as relieving civilians of their duty to help maintain law and order and safety. Police augment and assist citizens, as public servants.)

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

#80

Post by gist »

> A border officer searched plaintiff Zainab Merchant’s phone, despite her informing the officer that it contained privileged attorney-client communications.

(The following (what I say) does not mean to imply that I don't agree with the ruling:)

I don't get why this is a factor at all or even relevant. In particular the 'despite her informing the officer'. Why would the officer be in a position to determine a) If the plaintiff is even an attorney to begin with b) If the plaintiff was asserting that as some kind of defacto 'diplomatic immunity' (to only make a comparison) in order to prevent the phone from being searched because it might in fact contain contraband? Very convenient, right? Why in particular would the lawyers rights (because they are an attorney) be greater than any ordinary individual? Further why would it matter if an officer saw the attorney client information to begin with? The assumption is that anything they (the officer) sees would have to be kept private no matter what it was. Lastly could someone (a business person) then assert that there was material non public information on the phone and that as a reason to not search it? The point is if they did see it the officer could (in theory) trade on that information. Where does this stop?

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