Judge Allows Bradley Manning Supporter To Sue Government Over Border Search

Fluffeh writes "David Maurice House, an MIT researcher and Bradley Manning supporter, was granted the right to pursue a case against the government on Wednesday after a federal judge denied the government's motion to dismiss. 'This ruling affirms that the Constitution is still alive at the US border,' ACLU Staff Attorney Catherine Crump said in a statement. 'Despite the government's broad assertions that it can take and search any laptop, diary or smartphone without any reasonable suspicion, the court said the government cannot use that power to target political speech.' The agents confiscated a laptop computer, a thumb drive, and a digital camera from House and reportedly demanded, but did not receive, his encryption keys. DHS held onto House's equipment for 49 days and returned it only after the ACLU sent a strongly worded letter."

Comments

Not held in contempt?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised that he wasn't being held in contempt.. or similar.. for not handing over his keys..

Re:Not held in contempt?

[DaHat]

Being held in contempt would require a judge making such an order that was violated... in this case, it was simply CBP/DHS.

Re:Not held in contempt?

[Concerned Onlooker]

Not only that, but it's meanIngless since everyone holds the DHS in contempt.

Re:Not held in contempt?

[Kell Bengal]

If being in contempt of DHS was punishable, we would all be in jail.

Re:Not held in contempt?

[koan]

Try to keep up:

In United States v. Doe a federal appeals court 11th circuit ruled on feb 24 2012 that forcing decryption of ones laptop violates fifth amendment.[20][21]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law#United_States

Re:Not held in contempt?

[Nyder]

If being in contempt of DHS was punishable, we would all be in jail.

They are working on that.

Re:Not held in contempt?

[jd]

Doesn't that mean the DHS should be arrested?

Re:Not held in contempt?

[Ihmhi]

Oh, it's so rare that you hear about our country doing something right. How very pleasant.

Re:Not held in contempt?

[jcr]

Well, for that to happen we'd have to have a justice system. I'm not holding my breath for that, but then again I didn't expect to see the Berlin wall come down in my lifetime.

-jcr

Re:Not held in contempt?

[Gravis Zero]

dude, you're in jail too?! btw, the food suck here, amirite?

Re:Not held in contempt?

[Monoman]

I suggest everyone read up on that ruling and understand it was applied to a very specific situation.

Re:Not held in contempt?

[Anonymous Coward]

There have been conflicting rullings on that subject. In one case pople have been required by the courts to hand them over, but in other rullings it has been said they are not required to.

Everybody needs to be documenting every court rulling they hear about. Date, Times, Court, and case, and keep a record of it to present as soon as we hear something contradictory to it.

Now, You have no obligation to obey any law that is unconstitutional, even if it has not been declared as such.

Re:Not held in contempt?

[Anonymous Coward]

And what happens with conflicting rulings is eventually they work their way up to the Supreme Court, where the "conservative" judges, who are currently arguing that the Constitution presents us with a "limited" federal government, will rule that the government can do whatever the damn hell it wants if it's fighting "terrorism".

Re:Not held in contempt?

[DragonWriter]

If being in contempt of DHS was punishable, we would all be in jail.

You are mistaking "punishable" for "universally and consistently punished". But the point of making very common things punishable is generally for them not to be universally and consistently punished, but to provide easy pretexts for arbitrary punishment where the real motivation for the punishment isn't the thing that is "punishable".

A more accurate statement would be "if being in contempt of DHS was punishable, there would be a convenient pretext for punishing anyone".

Re:Not held in contempt?

[Iamthecheese]

All the government has to do to dodge that is claim it knows of a specific file. That claim alone is enough for a DA to subpoena your encrypted data.

Re:Not held in contempt?

[tibman]

Wouldn't that only get them access to that specific file? Any other data they found during the process wouldn't be admissible. I get most of my understanding of US Law from TV :)

Re:Not held in contempt?

[zlives]

there is no judicial process for that...

Inconsistent?

[DoofusOfDeath]

If they can't violate the 1st Amendment, then why can they violate the 4th?

Is this just setting up a contradiction that will land in the Supreme Court?

Re:Inconsistent?

[Anonymous Coward]

Amendments are obviously written in order of importance. Border searches are more important than the 4th amendment but less than the 1st. I think that it in fact lies somewhere between the 2nd and 3rd amendments in terms of importance.

Re:Inconsistent?

[PatPending]

Oh, for goodness sake, RTFA:

Under the "border search exception" of United States criminal law, international travelers can be searched without a warrant as they enter the U.S. Under the Barack Obama administration, law enforcement agents have aggressively used this power to search travelers' laptops, sometimes copying the hard drive before returning the computer to its owner. Courts have ruled that such laptop searches can take place even in the absence of any reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing.

Re:Inconsistent?

[koan]

The same supreme court that allowed the creation of super PAC's or "corporations are people"?

Re:Inconsistent?

[ae1294]

I'll just leave this here...
https://www.aclu.org/national-security_technology-and-liberty/are-you-living-constitution-free-zone

Re:Inconsistent?

[the eric conspiracy]

Warrantless, causeless border searches of closed containers by customs agents have been permissible since the beginning of the Republic under an act passed by the First Congress on July 31, 1787, merely 4 weeks after the ratification.

What makes this act constitutional is the power granted to Congress under the Constitution to regulate commerce between nations and enforce immigration laws.

It is VERY unlikely that the Supreme Court will touch this principle that has been in force for 230 years.

Re:Inconsistent?

[Cajun Hell]

Amendments are obviously written in order of importance

Oh shit, that means I have to give up alcohol!

Re:Inconsistent?

[pdabbadabba]

First remember that the 4th Amendment does not actually require a warrant before the government can search your property. It just requires that searches be "reasonable." It's just that in most cases the courts have held that reasonableness requires a warrant. Not so, they have said, at the border where travelers expect that they might be searched and where the government has a heightened interest in controlling what moves in and out of the country. Imagine trying to enforce customs regulations without an ability to search! (Note that I don't agree with all of the powers that the government claims flow from this, but this should help to explain why at least some of what they do is OK under the 4th Amendment.)

But the government can't enforce its laws in a way that infringe on other rights. So, for example, the police can't decide to only pull over black people for speeding, even if they were actually speeding. Or, here, the government can't decide to only seize the property of people who belong to the wrong organizations (such as the Bradley Manning Support Network). That would violate the 1st Amendment just as pulling over only black people for speeding would violate the 14th.

Re:Inconsistent?

[grcumb]

What makes this act constitutional is the power granted to Congress under the Constitution to regulate commerce between nations and enforce immigration laws.

It is VERY unlikely that the Supreme Court will touch this principle that has been in force for 230 years.

And what would make it UN-constitutional is if the search and seizure were done to silence domestic political opposition. Which is why the judge is allowing the case to proceed.

Re:Inconsistent?

[EdIII]

Which is why if I travel international from now on I remove my hard drives and replace them with a sanitized factory OS that only contains pictures of kittens and puppies. Anything really important can be retrieved over a VPN and then decrypted. Coming back into the US I have the hard drives removed and shipped before hand. Fuck em.

Of course that is a temporary measure and most likely useless when the DHS greatly expands its role to bus stops, truck weighing stations, interior border checkpoints, and the friendly mall nearest you.....

Eventually they will solve unemployment by making some barely educated moron, who graduated their fast track "degree in the security arts", pat me down entering and leaving my house.

Re:Inconsistent?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, for goodness sake, RTFA:

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, except outside U.S. borders or when the Congress decides to set up departments to do otherwise.

Re:Inconsistent?

[Anonymous Coward]

don't forget freeway rest areas, the most likely
hangout for the DHS and TSA

jr

Re:Inconsistent?

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

IIRC, the 4th amendment came from the Stamp Act. Under the Stamp Act, British law allowed for soldiers to essentially write their own search warrants. Naturally, the colonists weren't too happy about this and thus the intent of the ratifiers of the 4th amendment is that to search private property a search warrant must be issued.

Re:Inconsistent?

[Loki_666]

Wait a minute! Doesn't this mean if they copy the contents then they may be pirating software, films, and music? .

Re:Inconsistent?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. "Corporations are people" comes from the Supreme Court of about 200 years ago, and from England before that.

Re:Inconsistent?

[jcr]

Under the "border search exception" of United States criminal law,

Which does not trump the constitution. I'm very glad to see someone litigating this issue.

-jcr

Re:Inconsistent?

[jcr]

British law allowed for soldiers to essentially write their own search warrants.,

It was actually worse than that. A soldier could write out a "writ of assistance" that compelled people to help him conduct the search, including the person whose property was being searched. It was as bad as the "PATRIOT" act.

-jcr

Re:Inconsistent?

[Swampash]

Yes, but one of those Acts resulted in a revolution. For the other the people have just bent over and spread their buttocks.

Re:Inconsistent?

[Bob9113]

Imagine trying to enforce customs regulations without an ability to search!

Without the ability to search laptop hard drives? OK, I'll try to imagine that... Done. In fact, it was really easy. Here's how it goes:

You search things like trailers and trunks that carry physical things. Physical things that cannot cross the border via the Internet. Then, you don't search the hard drives, because they are not particularly useful for transporting Cuban cigars or Persian rugs.

Hard drives are only good for transporting data, which can travel just as easily through the Internet, or on a micro SD card that the border agents would not be able to find without stripping the vehicle to component parts. The increased probability of catching even a moderately intelligent data trafficker by checking laptop hard drives is vanishingly small, and utterly insufficient to be reasonable cause for avoiding a fourth amendment violation.

Which is to say; customs enforcement is not remotely credible as the actual, underlying justification for searching a hard drive.

Therefore, the objective of the executive in doing such searches must be something other than customs enforcement. Those objectives may be fine and wonderful things, but they are not directly related to crossing the border. The border crossing is the distinguishing event; the proximate source of reasonableness that prevents a violation of the fourth from a warrantless search. If the infraction in question is not directly related to the crossing of the border, the crossing of the border cannot be the means to satisfy the reasonableness requirement in a rational society.

Re:Inconsistent?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's like saying the drugs officers confiscate would be breaking laws by their possession.

Re:Inconsistent?

[stealth_finger]

Wait a minute! Doesn't this mean if they copy the contents then they may be pirating software, films, and music? .

Someone call the RIAA, maybe these two behemoths can bludgeon each other to death over a long drawn out battle and leave the rest of us the fuck alone for a while.

Re:Inconsistent?

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporations are not, and have never been people in England.

Re:Inconsistent?

[dkleinsc]

See, I've always recommended this map, also by the ACLU, that shows exactly where in the US your civil liberties are being protected properly.

Re:Inconsistent?

[pdabbadabba]

I agree! That's why I said "Note that I don't agree with all of the powers that the government claims flow from this." I think that the legality of seizing hard drives is a closer call than most /.ers do, but I ultimately agree that it's unconstitutional. I think it's usually more helpful, though, for me to make the legal case against the /. conventional wisdom when I can than to just report my own opinion. (And, honestly, the /.ers are often so confidently smug in their completely incorrect legal opinions that that disagreeing is sometimes irresistible. -- IAAL, btw.)

Also note, though, that customs enforcement was just an example. The government also, of course, has a particular national security interest at the border that, coupled with the fact that travelers should expect to be searched, causes them (and, unfortunately also the law to some degree) to conclude they can do just about anything they want within 100 miles of the border. This is a little ironic because they actually can't search your person without probably cause, even at the border -- that would violate your privacy!

Re:Inconsistent?

[jythie]

Careful, they might sieze your machine for having kitty porn on it then, which they would then claim with a strait face was 'technically true'.

Re:Inconsistent?

[jythie]

Actually, the 'corporate personhood' in the US started as an outgrowth of how British law handled the issue, so the basic framework did indeed come form England.

Re:Inconsistent?

[the eric conspiracy]

Which would be a violation of the FIRST Amendment, not the FOURTH, which is what we were discussing.

Re:Inconsistent?

[Anonymous Coward]

Amendments are obviously written in order of importance. Border searches are more important than the 4th amendment but less than the 1st. I think that it in fact lies somewhere between the 2nd and 3rd amendments in terms of importance.

Read the 9th amendment.

Re:Inconsistent?

[WillDraven]

I've heard more than my fair share of stories of evidence decreasing in weight and volume between arrest and the evidence locker (or even afterwards).

Of course I'm of the opinion that confiscating people's plant extracts and medicines and terrorizing them in the process should be against the law.

Re:Inconsistent?

[JesseMcDonald]

First remember that the 4th Amendment does not actually require a warrant before the government can search your property. It just requires that searches be "reasonable."

That is the common interpretation, but (IMHO) it's based on a misreading of the text.

A "warrant" is nothing more or less than permission to do something which would normally be illegal. In this case, to perform a search, which involves violating the owner's property rights. Without a warrant, one has, by definition, no permission to do anything which a normal private citizen couldn't do. Given that, the 4th amendment is clearly saying that "reasonable" warrants (and thus involuntary searches) are defined as ones which establish probable cause in advance, supported by oath or affirmation, as well as the place to be searched and what is being searched for (the item(s) to be seized). Those conditions have to be met for every warrant, so it's not enough that someone considers a broad class of search "reasonable" without any specific probable cause to expect the search to uncover illegal activity.

Now, at the border itself—not the huge "border zone" currently staked out, but the actual point of entry—one could claim that they are free to turn away non-citizens who do not consent to a search, and I would grant that this is compatible with the Constitution. If consent is granted then no warrant is necessary. However, citizens have an established right to re-enter their home country, so they cannot be turned away even if they do not consent (and lack of consent to a search does not, of itself, qualify as probable cause).

Re:Inconsistent?

[Anonymous Coward]

They need a "funny but scary" moderation.

Re:Inconsistent?

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

Thus the +5 mod on ill-informed GGP.

Re:Inconsistent?

[Bob9113]

I think it's usually more helpful, though, for me to make the legal case against the /. conventional wisdom when I can than to just report my own opinion.

I dig what you're saying, but the problem is the logic still is not there. If you're just saying, "This is what they argue", fine. I'm just saying, "This is why they are wrong."

Doesn't matter who says it is right, from a lackluster legal clerk with poor judgment to the SCOTUS, what they say is not necessarily what is right. Lots of case law and legal opinions are based on flawed logic or bluster. When they are not right, they must be challenged. A patriot has a duty neither to accept nor to posit irrational justifications for damaging the principles of this nation.

The government also, of course, has a particular national security interest at the border

That is the same argument as customs, and falls down for the same reason. The proximate event that gives rise to the national security interest at the border is the crossing of the border. Physical things have no choice but to transit the border in the physical realm, this gives the reasonable justification for searching trunks and trailers. The most wily villain in the world still has to move the physical thing across the border in the physical realm. Guns, bombs, bullets -- these things occupy space and have mass. They are easy to discover by checking trunks and trailers.

Data is not the same. Whether related to customs infringement or terror planning, data can cross the border just as easily via the Internet or SD card just as it can on a hard drive. As such, searching hard drives at the border cannot be a significantly effective means of catching credible threats to national security, because people who are credible threats to national security are not that stupid. Therefore national security cannot rationally be the actual motive of the executive, and likewise the act of crossing the border cannot be a sufficient cause to satisfy reasonableness in the fourth amendment.

coupled with the fact that travelers should expect to be searched

A citizen should not expect to be searched if there is no reasonable cause. Since crossing the border does not raise a reasonable cause to search a hard drive, as we have established above, there is no reasonable expectation of search of a hard drive. Without reasonable expectation of a search, there is a reasonable expectation of privacy. "We do it even though we do not have the authority to do it" is not a valid means to pierce the expectation of privacy.

Re:Inconsistent?

[Coren22]

Isn't the definition of porn that it is sexual in nature? Perhaps if the kittens were in the process of being raped by older cats?

I'm hoping

[Lucky_Pierre]

For change.

Re:I'm hoping

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope and Unchanged

From the article--

Under the Barack Obama administration, law enforcement agents have aggressively used this power to search travelers' laptops, sometimes copying the hard drive before returning the computer to its owner.

Re:I'm hoping

[rastos1]

I'm hoping ... for change.

Here. My $0.02. They are now yours. That's all you'll get.

Police State

[Anonymous Coward]

This country was founded (in part) to protect people from the very shenanigans going on now re: unlawful search and seizure. Most of this crap is being justified under the umbrella of the "war on terror." The current occupant was elected by in large to combat the Bush era Patriot Act and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Perhaps we have met the enemy.

Re:Police State

[Anonymous Coward]

We have met the enemy, and he is us. We're the ones who assumed BHO would be different from GWB.

Re:Police State

[Anonymous Coward]

"We have met the enemy, and he is us. We're the ones who assumed BHO would be different from GWB."

You can vote against Obama in the coming election.

I voted for him in the first election but now that I know he
is a liar I will vote for his opponent if only to see Obama's lying ass
replaced with a different liar.

Re:Police State

[koan]

Besides pointing out the obvious as an AC on /. what do you intend to do about it?

Re:Police State

[eldorel]

Voting against someone implies voting for someone else.

All i'm seeing is the same shit sandwich with different kinds of bread.


Sorry, not hungry.

Re:Police State

[bussdriver]

Me too.
But we can vote on gay marriage or some other tiny issue. The big issues have nobody to vote for and have not since Carter. Nobody honest is going to fly into office after a disaster because those guys are not allowed to rise in todays system even Obama coming "from nowhere" was fake, it was to appease the public with an outsider and a feeling of change helped by the symbolism of his skin color. Even the backlash is now engineered.

Some of us "depressing" people saw all this coming but nobody can handle the truth anymore. Hell, "Dr. Doom" was what they ridiculed the only honest economist talking publicly about the pending collapse. The morons who were 150% wrong are still respected pundits and allowed on TV at every opportunity. (Sports pundits seem to be handled no differently either.)

Re:Police State

[martin-boundary]

Ah, but it still hurts if your side doesn't get to stay in power longer than one term.

Even if both sides are interchangeable, suppose everyone alternates between voting D one election, and R the next, etc. Then we're ensuring that no president gets more than four years, and once they're out it's highly unlikely they'll be a viable candidate again, 4-8 years later: Some other guy from the party will eat their second lunch.

So the punishment is they get power for a few years, and then they're has-beens just when they started to get comfortable. Moreover, the next bunch of guys will probably nullify their "work" on ideological grounds before it's had time to have an effect. If they don't want that punishment, they can act in the interests of the people, and be rewarded with a second election win.

Re:Police State

[Anonymous Coward]

"We have met the enemy, and he is us. We're the ones who assumed BHO would be different from GWB."

You can vote against Obama in the coming election.

I voted for him in the first election but now that I know he
is a liar I will vote for his opponent if only to see Obama's lying ass
replaced with a different liar.

That's sad. You think you're being clever but you are doing exactly what they want you to do. BHO, GWB, etc may have different faces but they all work for the same side. You think you're striking a blow against BHO, and you are, but in doing so you ignore the fact your enemy wins nonetheless - tactically it's a victory, but strategically it's another defeat.
Republicans and Democrats alternate in screwing you and every time it happens you run to the other one, only to be screwed once more.

Re:Police State

[Anonymous Coward]

Who is this "we"? I voted for Ron Paul in '08. Serves you right for voting strategically. The true victims here are the libertarians who were dragged along by the stirrups.

Maybe next time you'll become a delegate so you can have a say at the national convention! Everyone knows the national election is over before it starts. You either hijack the nomination from the Republicrats or you get to choose the lesser of two evils in a single party system.

Re:Police State

[jcr]

We're the ones who assumed BHO would be different from GWB.

Speak for yourself. It was obvious to a lot of people that the teleprompter-in-chief was a wholly-owned minion of Goldman Sachs before he even set foot in the Senate chamber for the first time.

-jcr

Re:Police State

[Anonymous Coward]

You're assuming both parties aren't working for the same people. If they are, then the people they work for could give a rats ass how often we vote them out. We're just trading one puppet for another.

Re:Police State

[GmExtremacy]

More than two sides exist.

Re:Police State

[eldorel]

While there are more than two parties, the simple fact is that no third party candidate has even been on the ballot in every district in the past 20 years.

I've already talked about this in other threads over the past few years, but here it is again.
Last presidential election I was asked to leave my voting district after asking for a write in vote because the candidate I wanted was not available.

I even called the police department about it, expecting to have an officer preset to insure I didn't "disturb the peace".
Instead I was told to just vote for one of the people on the ballot and play nice.

How can we get anyone through the system that isn't a republican or democrat if they aren't allowed on the ballot, on TV, and aren't even allowed to participate in the "Open Debates" in places like ohio?

Re:Police State

[TheRaven64]

Expecting a new party to stand a chance in the presidential elections is like expecting to become CEO on your first day at a company. Start with local and state elections. Get a few people in and show that they're competent. Then stand for congress. Once you've got a few people in congress, use their voting records and speeches when campaigning for president. The only time I know of political parties becoming established and successful more quickly than this have been in new democracies or when they were formed by a group of people leaving an established party.

Re:Police State

[squiggleslash]

In this instance you vote for a third party.

Voting Republican if you're a civil libertarian tells the Democrats not that they lost civil libertarians, but that they lost conservatives, and thus pushes the Democrats to the right, while causing issues on civil liberties to be ignored.

What you do is find a third party that is more representative of your views than the parties of power.

Policy wonks and party management generally ignore non-voters: they look at who votes and who they voted for. If a small party seems to have attracted a lot of voters who'd normally be in your camp, you look into why they voted against you, and see what you can do to win them over next time.

But this "I have to vote for the two biggest parties or not vote at all" crap has to stop. If you want clear blue water between both parties, with at least one actually representing your point of view, you do the world a disservice if you don't take a positive action to force the parties to change.

Re:Police State

[Hatta]

Start with local and state elections. Get a few people in and show that they're competent. Then stand for congress.

All the while that you're working on the political machine, the political machine is working on you. By the time you actually achieve any power, you're beholden to the same special interests you set out to oppose.

The only time I know of political parties becoming established and successful more quickly than this have been in new democracies

Exactly. The only chance we have is to call America done and start over.

Re:Police State

[Anonymous Coward]

Well some of us are just happy with the facts that we are not yet at war with Iran, are on schedule for getting our ugly mugs out of Iraq and Afghanistan, are generally on the "right" side of the Arab spring, and are not in another arms race with Russia. Just to give a few examples. There's this thing called reality where nasty things like killing people's families on foreign soil for reasons that are demonstrated to be flim-flam has genuine and long-lasting drawbacks. Pretending there is "no difference" is simply a disingenuous strategy by one side to try to make the other forget things like this.

And your comment is basically nonsense anyway because it is largely congress, not the administration, that has dropped the ball on reigning in the finance industry. And most of the "bailout" was already in motion by the time Obama took office. Most of the really nasty deals seemed to happen in December -- under the lame-duck.

Re:Police State

[Anonymous Coward]

Both sides are republican, so vote bad?

Re:Police State

[mrchaotica]

That's why the more important election is actually the primary, not the general.

Re:Police State

[Anonymous Coward]

on schedule for getting our ugly mugs out of Iraq and Afghanistan

Its pretty easy to stay on schedule when you constantly push back the due date.

Re:Police State

[interkin3tic]

There are primaries you can vote in. I hear a lot of talk about Ron Paul, very little talk about "I registered as a republican and voted for Ron Paul in the primary." Then we talk about how the two candidates are virtually identical, seeing no connection between the two.

Re:Police State

[interkin3tic]

But with the first past the post voting system we have, they really don't matter aside from those rare times when one of the two parties dies and another one rises to take its place.

We could change it of course. We could change the constitution, which would require forcing most members of congress to make a vote that would hurt both republican and democratic parties. So that's a technical possibility.

Re:Police State

[interkin3tic]

We could also work with the parties we have now, voting in the primaries for people who will be willing to change the special interests grasp on power. Of course that would require voting in the primaries, which we don't like to do, but I'd submit that if Americans are too lazy to vote in primaries, we're FAR too lazy to "call america done and start over."

Re:Police State

[Hatta]

Why do you imagine voting in the primaries would help? Who would you have voted for in 2008 who was a more credible agent for reform than Obama? He was the most credible agent for change, not just in 2008, but in my lifetime. He not only didn't deliver on the change, he accelerated the abuses he was elected to reform. Working with the parties is a hopeless endeavor.

Re:Police State

[mcgrew]

In the last Presidential election there were 5 parties on enough ballots to have a mathematical chance of winning. The problem is that the media are all owned by the 1%, and so are the two major parties. The media have convinced almost everyone that a vote for a loser is wasted (so I guess you wasted your vote if you voted for McCain). He who controls information rules.

Re:Police State

[eldorel]

Really? Which five?
The only ones I saw on our ballot were Dem, Rep, Green and Libertarian....

Also, is there any way to establish which parties are on enough ballots before the vote?
It would be nice to be able to avoid the mathmatically screwed candidates ahead of time.

Re:Police State

[interkin3tic]

The problem there then would seem to lie with voting period, not the two party system or primaries. It sounds like you would have voted for him even if he had been one of a dozen different party candidates.

Obviously a multiparty system would not create better candidates out of thin air. If people we want to be elected to office are not running for election, it could be due to the two party system. However I believe what discourages good people from running for office is far more complex than that. Thus I think abandoning the system we have now would not produce candidates, and would not have changed the outcome in the 2008 election: we still would have voted for Obama.

Re:Police State

[Hatta]

No, I would not have voted for Obama under any circumstances. The most credible agent for change in my lifetime was still not a credible agent for change.

The problem is not just the two party system. It's winner take all elections. It's gerrymandering. It's riders on "must pass" bills. It's the lack of a "no confidence" option on the ballot. It's private financing of elections. It's pervasive lobbying. It's legal bribery.

If it were just a matter of getting another party on the ballot, it wouldn't be so bad. But the system is so rigged that even if you get another party on the ballot, you still can't compete with entrenched political power. The only choice we have is to get rid of it all and start over.

Re:Police State

[jcr]

it is largely congress, not the administration, that has dropped the ball on reigning in the finance industry.

The only "reigning in" the finance industry needs is to be exposed to their own losses.

And most of the "bailout" was already in motion by the time Obama took office.

Obama appointed Timothy Geithner as the secretary of the treasury. Don't kid yourself, Obama's a wall street minion.

-jcr

Re:Police State

[mcgrew]

There were six on my ballot. The Constitution Party probably wasn't on yours, but they were on enough to win. It would be nice to know ahead of time who was on enough ballots, but afaik you can only see the last election, not the next.

Strongly worded letter

[PatPending]

Anyone have a link to (or copy of) the ACLU's "strongly worded letter" to the TSA? Its contents might prove useful to others in a similar situation.

Re:Strongly worded letter

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but I can point you to the many strongly-worded letters I've sent to politicians, manufacturers, restaurants, and TV Guide, concerning various topics. They're all excellent examples of strongly-worded letters that had no effect.

Re:Strongly worded letter

[ThatsMyNick]

Return his equipment OR ELSE.....!

Signed,
ACLU

Re:Strongly worded letter

[iamgnat]

Return his equipment OR ELSE.....!

We'll put you in the COMFY CHAIR!

Re:Strongly worded letter

[shentino]

Considering it was the ACLU that sent it I wouldn't be surprised if threats of litigation were included.

Re:Strongly worded letter

[solarissmoke]

Here it is:

http://aclum.org/sites/all/files/legal/re_david_house/fong_robles_vincent_re_david_House_12-21-10.pdf

Re:Strongly worded letter

[PatPending]

Awesome! Thank you!

Re:Strongly worded letter

[Inda]

As an Englishman, I can obtusely say that that's no strongly worded letter.

Where's the wit? The wow-words? The insulting, demeaning tone? The hidden threats?

And, at five pages, that novel was four pages too long.

God save the Queen.

Re:Strongly worded letter

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Sir,

I wish to protest in the strongest possible terms your reply. It is well known that you are considered quite silly and it is rumored you have attempted to offend every one on the planet!

And another thing -- why can't you cover the good things on the Internet, like many of the wonderful sites containing the poems of Carlton Vladivostok?

Yours, etc.

Brigadier General Sir Charles Uppington Smythe (Mrs.)

Re:Strongly worded letter

[Bob the Super Hamste]

The English do seem to have mastered the art of rhetoric. I did enjoy watching one of the "discussion" in the British Parliament after Gordon Brown got back from one of the bailout meetings late last year when I was in Europe. It was dramatically different from what I have seen in the US in our congressional debates.

Re:Strongly worded letter

[slackersurreal]

Can't agree more, it was a very weak letter indeed, and more to the point there wasn't a single hint of legal action.

For anyone that found it a bit tldr; the letter amounted to:

Sup,
Please give me my stuff back and delete any copies, I find this whole thing unconstitutional.

Look forward to hearing from you,
Lawyer guy.

Not Inconsistent...

[IBitOBear]

Violating the First Amendment is a violation of Apparent Freedom(tm) and is part of Political Theater(tm).

Violating the Fourth Amendment is a violation of Apparent Secrecy(tmp and is part of Security Theater(tm).

The DHS, in its puppet role over the TSA is in charge of Security Theater(tm) and so had no leg to stand on against the First Amendment.

If proper form were followed, the DHS would have picked a fight with House in a public place away from the border but within view of a political edifice, and "accidentally damaged" the material seized, then claimed it was known to contain child pornogrpahy because someone saw it over House's shoulder.

In short, this was all a failure of Due Process, as they used the entirely incorrect Rail Road in its persuit.

It'll be fixed in post production before air... just you wait...

Re:Not Inconsistent...

[koan]

You lost me at "persuit".

Re:Not Inconsistent...

[IBitOBear]

Railroading someone in pursuit of "Justice(tm)" has become commonplace in this country. Each form of railroading has its very onw pro-forma means and mode of operation. In drugs offenses, for instance, they get to weigh the packaging as part of the drug and assign "street value" that corresponds to no known street in order to lay on extra charges etc. In this case they used border seizure on a politically undersireable person. This was not the correct means or venue. e.g. "they picked the wrong railroad" to go after this guy. (the e instad of u was just a typo.)

Re:Not Inconsistent...

[Anonymous Coward]

In proper form, DHS could have simply asked DoD for a drone strike while he was still on foreign soil, or while his plane was outside U.S. airspace...

Re:Not Inconsistent...

[SuricouRaven]

Long been commonplace. It's standard practice in computer crime to count the cost of securing the computers as damages - that's how a hacker (Or more often, script kiddie with luck) can break into a system, do nothing, leave, and still do enough 'damage' to make it a felony.

Re:Not Inconsistent...

[Anonymous Coward]

DHS does violate this and many other laws all the time. Why are they not arrested? If they ever tried that on somebody in front of me, I would arrest the DHS agent on the spot for Interfearing with Constitutional Rights.

FYI "Apparent Freedom", "Political Theater", "Apparent Secrecy" and "Security Theater" are not trademarkable phrases because they are generic and have been used for many years, by many people and in many way.

Re:Not Inconsistent...

[glop]

That's really an intriguing interpretation of the economics at play. It makes you wonder why anybody would ever pay for penetration testing or audits of any kind...

Re:Not Inconsistent...

[coolsnowmen]

because not all hackers get caught, and a hacked network can cost your company much more money than the cost of paying someone to secure it.

Look Out!

[exomondo]

He's got a strongly worded letter!

Re:Look Out!

[jd]

So long as it's not a French Letter.

Another ass wiped with our Constitution

[SirBitBucket]

Why is it that our asinine politicians in both parties have no respect for the Constitution anymore? I thought at least this crap would get better under Obama. Instead it has only gotten worse...

Re:Another ass wiped with our Constitution

[Anonymous Coward]

because the average american hates the constitution and any time you say we should follow it people call you a "fucking libertarian" or a paultard... and they wonder why they live in a police state...

Re:Another ass wiped with our Constitution

[bussdriver]

No, not that much changed is the problem; even that part about killing US citizen terrorists was claimed to be already possible from a previous law (which expired or wasn't explicit enough to satisfy John McCain; i forget which but the OTHER candidate wrote the bill... and I think a veto wouldn't have stopped it anyhow, which they knew wasn't going to happen before they voted.)

It is that no ass kissing politician (does anybody vote for anything else?) has the guts to stop something that they KNOW will be used to blame any future nutcase's actions on them-- even if the guy is stopped, it'll be "why did he get that far?" "We would have stopped that if we had --Fascist law-- that the evil --honest politician-- repealed." The only safe thing would be to arrest him BEFORE he commits the crime, then they will not make that attack stick but instead rant about freedom to not be arrested prematurely, until they are in power... then the two sides switch strategies. You'd think TV nation would recognize a redo; oh wait, they don't. Aren't they redoing Spiderman soon? - already

Plus Obama doesn't even have the guts to be impeached for invoking the 14th Amendment; which was one of the threats during the whole farce about the illegal debt ceiling.

Re:Another ass wiped with our Constitution

[ppanon]

To be fair, it would be the Senate that would need to have the guts to impeach Obama since impeachment of the President is a Senatorial responsibility.

Re:Another ass wiped with our Constitution

[Anonymous Coward]

That's usually because you're proposing a strict interpretation which doesn't have any basis in case law. The US constitution hasn't been interpreted literally in centuries. It's mostly held literally when convenient for one side or the other.

Re:Another ass wiped with our Constitution

[alexo]

Why is it that our asinine politicians in both parties have no respect for the Constitution anymore?

Because violating it carries no personal consequences.

Equate constitutional violations to treason and you'll see how fast things change.

Can We Search You ?

[rust627]

Yes We Can !

Re:Can We Search You ?

[game kid]

That's Barack O'Bob the Builder for ya.

Re:Can We Search You ?

[mSparks43]

Somehow I seriously doubt Obama is taking peoples laptops at the Border.
Especially since he is letting people sue the ones who were.

Re:Can We Search You ?

[kbolino]

From TFS:

David Maurice House, an MIT researcher and Bradley Manning supporter, was granted the right to pursue a case against the government on Wednesday after a federal judge denied the government's motion to dismiss.

The administration was against allowing the lawsuit. The courts thought otherwise. We have multiple branches of government, and they're not all run by the President.

Correct but also the GP is correct

[Sycraft-fu]

He was answering the original question. Searches at the border don't violate the 4th amendment. It doesn't say "no searches" or anything like that, it say there can't be any "unreasonable searches".

What is reasonable varies with the situation. For your home, it is pretty high. A warrant is required in almost all cases. For the border, it is pretty low. The SC has decided there is no expectation of privacy there, that the government has a right to secure its borders, and so on and as such they don't even need probable cause to do a search.

Hence the answer to the original question that no, these searches don't violate the 4th amendment.

In terms of this particular one, we'll see. If the search was done on account of they don't like what the person had to say or their politics, then yes it'll get ruled illegal. The searches at the border aren't unlimited, they can't be used as harassment, they just have a low standard. If the government had a legit reason for the search, then it is fine. It would also be ok if it was a random search (it wasn't, but if it was it would be ok).

More or less the reason they could be in trouble is if the purpose of the search was to harass him in an attempt to suppress his first amendment rights. That would be illegal. If the search was for another purpose, that would be legal.

Manipulation

[Anonymous Coward]

However great the intention of the constitution, it is being manipulated like passages from the bible at a Sunday school.
There is nothing more distortable than sweeping statements put into law.

Idea of amendments

[roman_mir]

The entire idea of amendments is flawed. The people have forgotten obviously that the Federal government only exists as an agreement among States (ratification is signing a contract), and the Constitution enumerates the powers of the federal government. But this means that the governments has no powers except for those that are listed in Article 1, section 8, however amendments cloud this issue for the crowd (supposedly not for judges and politicians, right?) and the crowd believes that the government is allowed everything and it is only limited by the amendments.

It was probably the first step on the way of destroying the contract that was the Constitution - allowing the amendments in the first place.

Of-course the original document shouldn't have been signed the way it was proposed because of various included violations of the human rights in the first place ( blacks are not full people, etc.)

Re:Idea of amendments

[Anonymous Coward]

Ergo, why a new constitution every 50 years is a GOOD idea.

Re:Cervical fusion

[philip.paradis]

Why don't you fuse your asshole to your mouth so you have more difficulty spamming people with your ad?

Gah

[mad-seumas]

I thought that getting Gentoo to boot as an HVM under an ancient Xen Dom0 was going to be the thing that made me the angriest today, but then I read this story...

Our very own gestapo, and all it took was one well-placed terrorist attack, a decade of festering, and a populace with no will to stop it.

Re:Gah

[dave420]

If you think this is anything like the Gestapo, you should go read a book. Senseless hyperbole like yours is just as dangerous as the apathy you decry.

Headless Beast

[jduhls]

Ah, the Military Industrial Complex again rears its Anti-American/Freedom/Privacy head. Eisenhower, 1961: never forget.

relevance

[Anonymous Coward]

how is being a bradley manning supporter in any way relevant to challenging the fishing expeditions they do at the border?

I support manning, but I don't bring that up when it isn't relevant. maybe everyone should mention that they support manning to the waiter next time they go to a restaurant.

Galloway V. the U.S. Senate

[Anonymous Coward]

...or "what happens when a politician who is used to having to explain himself to everybody encounters a roomful of politicians who don't feel they have to explain themselves to anybody."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrdFFCnYtbk

Re:Cervical fusion

[mcgrew]

See that little black flag? Click it, it alerts /. staff. I clicked the flag on a spam post earlier this afternoon and it was gone in five minutes.

The spammer's not going to see your reply, he probably doesn't even have an account.

Re:Cervical fusion

[philip.paradis]

Every now and then I like to call the business being advertised in that manner, and point out comments like the GP. It's good for a laugh.