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DHS Can Seize Your Electronics Within 100 Mi.of US Border, Says DHS
dreamstateseven writes "In a not-so-unexpected move, the Department of Homeland Security has concluded that travelers along the nation's borders may have their electronics seized and the contents of those devices examined for any reason whatsoever — all in the name of national security. According to legal precedent, the Fourth Amendment — the right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures — does not apply along the border. The memo highlights the friction between today's reality that electronic devices have become virtual extensions of ourselves housing everything from e-mail to instant-message chats to photos and our papers and effects — juxtaposed against the government's stated quest for national security. By the way, the government contends the Fourth-Amendment-Free Zone stretches 100 miles inland from the nation's actual border."
This is why we NRA members keep our guns: to defend our freedoms from the government!
As we speak millions of NRA members are marching weapons in hand, erh, what was that... Imean thousands are marching,... come again, not that many? ok hundreds are marching..., no? not even that? ok Right now as we speak some of us NRA members are even thinking about doing something about this, which is why we keep our weapons ready!
The Constitution also gives Congress the power to regulate trade. You cannot do that without the ability to inspect items coming into the US.
One of the very first laws passed by the first Congress in 1787 was the provision to allow customs inspections at borders.
What people are complaining about here is US law that is just as old and well established as the Constitution itself.
The problem is that the founding fathers had no experience with an actual violent revolution. They successfully waged a war of separation and won their independence but never even got within 3000 miles of the capital of the Empire, little well dispose the King.
Violent revolution always seems to go bad and even non-violent revolution often ends up worse then pre-revolution.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Ah, you see, I make the argument that the Constitution is not in fact a "living, breathing, malleable document", that it is to the government what criminal code is to an individual.
The Constitution is the law and when the government officials say that the law needs to be interpreted rather than clarified and amended if it is unclear on something, what they are saying and doing is they are breaking it.
A murder trial involves figuring out whether murder was committed and whether the individual in front of the judge and jury did it and what the punishment should be. Of-course jury can nullify the law, but so far I hear that nobody tried doing that during a murder trial. So the trial does not include figuring out whether murdering people is bad, whether the legislature that set the law meant for people to be murdered under certain circumstances, if the person murdering them was doing it while pursuing criminals (or terrorists) as a government official for example.
Same thing must be done in case of the Constitutional law, same thing exactly - if something is unclear in the Constitution it needs to be clarified IN the Constitution.
However the Constitution must be followed, it is the chains around the hands and the legs of the government. It is supposed to be the chains that hold government within its limits. But what happened to that idea? The politicians figured out that amending the Constitution is too damn hard, they would rather break the law and call that "an interpretation".
You can't handle the truth.