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Federal Judge Limits DHS Laptop Border Searches
Declan McCullogh is reporting at CNET that a federal district court judge has rebuked the Department of Homeland Security, "which had claimed it can seize a traveler's laptop and search it six months later without warrant." As described in the article, DHS policies have been stacked against travelers entering the US, including citizens returning from abroad: "There's no requirement that they be returned to their owners after even six months or a year has passed, though supervisory approval is required if they're held for more than 15 days. The complete contents of a hard drive or memory card can be perused at length for evidence of lawbreaking of any kind, even if it's underpaying taxes or not paying parking tickets." This ruling does not address immediate searches at the border, but says that DHS cannot hold computers for indefinite searching, as in the case to hand, concerning a US citizen returning from a trip to Korea, whose laptop was seized and held for months before a search was even conducted on it.
The U.S. is generally a country with some notion of property rights, though, so the police cannot arbitrarily seize and keep things if no law was violated, even at borders. They can search luggage entering the country, sure, but this case was about whether the police may keep a laptop for six months or longer without any sort of forfeiture proceeding or at least some sort of showing that the laptop was contraband under U.S. law and properly subject to confiscation.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
What rule? What a custom agent says is the rule. If you question it, or even hesitate, you earn a beat down and a felony conviction.
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Yes, they can. They do it all the time. Try traveling somewhere with a large amount of cash (even inside the country). If the cops find out, they'll seize the cash and let you go because they have nothing to charge you with. You don't get the cash back though.
The US used to have a notion of property rights, embodied in the 4th Amendment, but that notion is long gone, and the 4th Amendment is now null and void.