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A federal district court in New York has ruled that U.S. border agents must obtain a warrant before searching the electronic devices of Americans and international travelers crossing the U.S. border.
The ruling on July 24 is the latest court opinion to upend the U.S. government’s long-standing legal argument, which asserts that federal border agents should be allowed to access the devices of travelers at ports of entry, like airports, seaports and land borders, without a court-approved warrant.
“The ruling makes clear that border agents need a warrant before they can access what the Supreme Court has called ‘a window into a person’s life,’” Scott Wilkens, senior counsel at the Knight First Amendment Institute, one of the groups that filed in the case, said in a press release Friday.
The district court’s ruling takes effect across the U.S. Eastern District of New York, which includes New York City-area airports like John F. Kennedy International Airport, one of the largest transportation hubs in the United States.
Critics have for years argued that these searches are unconstitutional and violate the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unwarranted searches and seizures of a person’s electronic devices.
In this court ruling, the judge relied in part on an amicus brief filed on the defendant’s behalf that argued the unwarranted border searches also violate the First Amendment on grounds of presenting an “unduly high” risk of a chilling effect on press activities and journalists crossing the border.
With several federal courts ruling on border searches in recent years, the issue of their legality is likely to end up before the Supreme Court, unless lawmakers act sooner.
It isn’t random. They search phones belonging to people they suspect of crimes, but don’t have enough evidence to get a warrant for, people they think are connected to criminals even if they are not criminals themselves, and people they want to harass such as activists.
They also search people who book last minute tickets to major cities because they suspect drug trafficking
With something like iCloud backup, It would be as simple as wiping your phone before going through border patrol, and then restoring it once you are through. Seems like a violation of privacy that’s easy to get around for those that want to, and a waste of resources searching the phones of those people who don’t care enough to wipe their phone
If you have reason to think you’ll get searched, methods like this can be very effective. If you’re entering the USA and you’re not a citizen, there’s a chance having a freshly wiped phone will lead to you being denied entry.
Evidently quite a few people who have evidence of crimes on their phones don’t do that sort of thing; the person in the ruling this article about is accused of possessing child sexual abuse media on his phone. It probably isn’t a waste of resources with regard to finding evidence of crimes like that; it is a cheat code for searches that would ordinarily be unconstitutional, at least in judicial districts where the courts haven’t cracked down on it yet.
Yeah I guess if you aren’t a citizen and have a blank phone that could be a red flag, makes sense. The fact that it’s managed to find stuff to me still doesn’t make it ethical. Seems like the type of thing where the NSA will contract palantir to write software to rapidly copy the contents of your entire device and add it to a database about you, which as of now may not be used for nefarious means, but that only depends on who is in power.
The RICO case against the Stop Cop City protestors in Atlanta is using blank phones of protestors–who are all American citizens–as proof of criminal intent and conspiracy. It’s a catch-22; lack of evidence is evidence of guilt.
And it seems like if you’re running drugs or whatever and worried about this type of search, you just use a burner phone anyway. Or if you’re only going one way, mail your personal phone.