Homeland Security Border Agents Can Seize Your Phone (cnn.com)

Slashdot reader v3rgEz writes: A Wall Street Journal reporter has shared her experienced of having her phones forcefully taken at the border -- and how the Department of Homeland Security insists that your right to privacy does not exist when re-entering the United States. Indeed, she's not alone: Documents previously released under FOIA show that the DHS has a long-standing policy of warrantless (and even motiveless) seizures at the border, essentially removing any traveler's right to privacy.
"The female officer returned 30 minutes later and said I was free to go," according to the Journal's reporter, adding. "I have no idea why they wanted my phones..."

Comments

Easy

[Anonymous Coward]

"I have no idea why they wanted my phones..."

They didn't want the phones, they wanted to exercise power over you. They're low paid, in shitty jobs and hated for it. Acts like this are about all they can look forwards to.

Re:Encryption

[ArchieBunker]

They can't compel you but they could hold you in jail for a while.

Re:Encryption

[Anonymous Coward]

Not if you travel for business.

A journalist does not know what is going on?

[Ecuador]

A journalist (of the WSJ no less) has no idea what is going on in their country? That's what was the most surprising to me. I mean, I knew about the 100-mile border rule and I am neither a journalist, nor a US citizen. I thought the US journalists are in on it with the government by not drawing attention to the slowly eroding US constitutional rights, but in this case it is not some conspiracy, the journalist is an idiot. Where idiot here is also used in the original meaning from the ancient greek (no unicode to list it here) which was referred to people who were not interested in the affairs of the State.
If a journalist whose job is to know stuff exactly like this, is surprised to find something like that out, what hope do the people in the US realize that they have let them take away their rights one by one?

Re:Encryption

[inode_buddha]

True that. Makes you wonder how humanity even functioned before they were invented. (sarc)

Wrong case for 4th amend, Customs can search

[drnb]

Exactly this. In this era of a complete disregard for the 4th amendment ...

I agree there is disregard for the 4th amendment but this is NOT the case to argue that. US Customs has *always* been allowed to search your person and property at a border crossing since the founding days of our republic. What may be arguable in this case is that a TSA agent did the search not a Customs agent. Of course "deputizing" TSA as customs agents would close that loophole.

Is there any government on earth that does not have the right to search the person and property of an international traveler when they cross the border? Note "international traveler", within the EU you are no longer an international traveler, but when originally entering the EU from outside you were.

And by at the border I am referring to at the border, not 100 miles inside. That is a different situation IMO.

Re:Wrong case for 4th amend, Customs can search

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is the border patrol agents are allowing foreign citizens to enter the county at will, while harassing and intimidating the USAian citizens. Drugs can come in freely, but if you have dog food re-entering the USA from Canada without the appropriate documentation and certification, they will hold you up against the wall and ass rape you. The border patrol agents do not patrol the border to protect it. They patrol it to harass, intimidate, and demand fees of the citizens of the USA. It is easier to leave the country than to reenter it. I am wondering if maybe the thing to do is just stay away from the 3rd world hell hole that the USA has become under President Obama.

Just my 2 pennies.

Re:Wrong case for 4th amend, Customs can search

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree there is disregard for the 4th amendment but this is NOT the case to argue that. US Customs has *always* been allowed to search your person and property at a border crossing since the founding days of our republic.

That's actually a misunderstanding of a fundamental characteristic of US law.

The law authorizing search was passed by Congress PRIOR to the Bill of Rights and was NEVER compliant with the Bill of Rights. It was not complaint when it was written, and it has never been brought into compliance.

Further, some of the current policies can never be brought into compliance with the Bill of Rights: rights such as the right to privacy arise under the 9th Amendment (rights retained by the people) and the 10th Amendment (rights reserved to the people).

As the Bill of Rights is the highest law in the land, it supersedes all lessor law, including Acts of Congress written prior to the Bill of Rights. This is called "Hierarchy of Law". There IS a right to privacy at borders, and the government can NOT take that away.

All rights have limits, however, and so long as the policies are clearly spelled out, and the government can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the public approves of particular reasonable limitations - and the policies involved don't represent discrimination or otherwise violate minority rights - then the policies implementing those limitations can be implemented (provided it is done in a reasonable manner).

Since none of this has been done, it follows that the current policies are illegal, and federal officers enforcing those policies are in violation of their oaths to uphold the Bill of Rights.

Certainly in this particular case the government broke the law: if they needed access to the phone, they needed to prove that before a judge, they needed to get a warrant, and the evidence leading to that warrant needs to be subject to long term public oversight (as a consequence of the 9th Amendment right to long term oversight over government and the practice of law).

It's not as if a phone can conceal a nuclear weapon, or something like that where the public would clearly approve of a search. No reasonable limitations to the right to privacy apply in this case.

The assumption that the Bill of Rights can be generally violated at borders represents an ongoing failure of professional integrity on the part of the US legal profession. Members of the legal profession working as judges, or in Congress, or as Presidents, or in various federal agencies - who certainly have the education to understand the basic issues here - should have fixed this long ago. Further, the Bar Associations should have made the point on their own initiative if government failed to do so.

Unfortunately, the lawyers like having screwed up laws, overly complex laws, even contradictory laws - it creates long term business for legal professionals. The technical term for this is "ethical conflict of interest", and it's the reason the US legal system is such a disaster. Typically it takes a long time, and massive public effort (on the order of the Civil War, or at least the 1960's Civil Rights Movement) to correct the kinds of ethics problems that result from systematic failures of legal ethics.

By definition, rights retained by the people can not be taken away by ANY entity of government, and that includes the US Supreme Court. That court is only Supreme over other federal courts, NOT over rights Retained by or Reserved to The People - indeed any precedent to the contrary represents a violation of the oaths to uphold the Bill of Rights that the judges swore as preconditions to holding that office, as well as unethical practice of law, and hence a violation of the Constitutional requirement of "good behavior".

In other words, no court ruling can authorize illegal conduct by government officials. The lawyers are supposed to understand this, and there's a precedent from a place called Nuremberg that should help clarify their thinking.

Troubling

[Locke2005]

What I find most troubling about this is that they demanded her phone, but then backed down when she insisted on getting WSJ lawyers involved. That implies that they were attempting to do something by intimidation that they were aware they had no legal right to force her to do. Is anyone else bothered by law enforcement using this tactic? I've heard of other cases, i.e. stopping people on the street and tellling them, "You need to show me what's in your bag" Well, according to the Fourth Amendment, no I don't, but probably most people assume law enforcement understands the law better than they do. Fact is, citizens are required to abide by thousands of laws, and ignorance is not an excuse. But if law enforcement doesn't apply the laws correctly, they can always claim ignorance of the law. Not really a reciprocal balance of rights, is it?

Don't travel to US.

[stooo]

The US government doesn't want us going to this crazy country, and get some tourist and travel economy going.
So we'll travel elsewhere.
Don't travel to US.

Re:Don't travel to US.

[david_bonn]

... except for the fact that I have had similar experiences in Canada, the UK, and Switzerland. With both laptops and smartphones.

So now I travel with a burner phone and an old netbook. No big loss if they are confiscated.

Re:Don't take anything electronic into the USA

[myowntrueself]

Americans, why are you putting up with this? By passively accepting these acts, you are letting your government slowly turn your once-great nation into a totalitarian police state. It brings to mind the speech from V For Vendetta:

"I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn't be? War, terror, disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you, and in your panic you turned to the high chancellors, Clinton, Bush, and Obama. They promised you order, they promised you peace, and all they demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent."

Why do you think there are Libertarians in North America and practically nowhere else?