Slashdot Mirror
Woman Sues US Border Agents Over Seized iPhone (bbc.com)
An American woman who had her phone seized by border agents as she returned home to the United States is suing the country's border protection agency. Bob the Super Hamste shares a report: Rejhane Lazoja was stopped at Newark airport, New Jersey, after returning from a trip to Switzerland in February. Her iPhone was seized by agents after she refused to unlock it for them. The lawsuit alleges that border agents took a copy of the data on her smartphone and failed to say whether it had been deleted. According to legal documents, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) kept the phone for more than 120 days before returning it to Ms Lazoja, who is a Muslim woman and wears a hijab. [...] "Neither was there probable cause, nor a warrant [to search the phone]. Therefore, the search and seizure of Ms Lazoja's property violated her rights under the Fourth Amendment," the filing says.
her lawyer should have told her that the border agents have that authority... as bad as it sounds...
probably should wipe phone before travel as a privacy measure. delete pics and texts... probably better to use a travel phone with nothing on it.
its retarded... but we live in retarded times.
The land of the free!
(Some restrictions apply. See insert for details.)
What malarky is this? Americans have the right to be free from unreasonable search and seizure in the 4th amendment, from the US Govt. It says so right there, and there are no clauses based on locality.
If a foreign government seeks to search toy in their country, that is between you, them, and maybe the State Dept.
But, our rights are our rights and our government can not breach them, just because we are somewhere abroad.
But the AC is actually not wrong. This has been going on for well over a decade, and I'm pretty certain it has been fought before in court and the court upheld it. However, I also seem to recall reading very recently that a law was either proposed or actually passed not long ago that would prevent this.
So the question boils down to this. Can Border Agents search you as you enter the USA or not? Does that include your phone and other personal effects?
On one hand, we have the 4th amendment which prohibits warrantless searches without legal review. On the other hand, we have the clear need to secure the border, which requires some level of inspection of persons and the things they are carrying.
The whole argument about the content that might or might not have been on the phone is moot regardless of her religious views. If the data from the phone has been deleted or not is also moot. I also doesn't matter how she was dressed. That stuff is just thrown in for PR purposes, as she's trying to claim she was profiled.
My guess is the courts will hold it was legal to inspect the phone, demanding she unlock it and confiscate it when she refused. But that begs the question about it this is really how we want to do things.... I'm not so sure.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
The constitutionality of it has not actually been upheld. All that is upheld is you have *less* rights to the right of privacy at the border.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
CBP does these seizures under the legal rationale that when you are entering the U.S., you are initially outside U.S. soil, and thus Constitutional protections do not apply. The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that U.S. law does not apply outside U.S. soil (nor should you want it to - that would give the CIA free reign to enforce U.S. law in other countries). That's the whole reason Bush put a prison in Guantanamo Bay. Because while it's a U.S. base, it's not on U.S. soil. It's on Cuban soil. And by holding prisoners there, he hoped to deny them protections provided by the U.S. Constitution (which the Supreme Court has ruled applies even to illegal aliens if they're on U.S. soil).
Unless/until the Supreme Court rules that U.S. law applies to people at U.S. border checkpoints but have not yet been admitted to the U.S., this stuff will continue. Business travelers ferrying sensitive information in/out of the U.S. that they wish to keep out of the hands of the government typically wipe their devices clean. Then once they're out of the U.S., connect to their company's network via a VPN and restore backups of their devices. Repeat the process in reverse when entering the U.S. Connect to to their company via VPN, create a backup of their devices, then wipe their devices before going through customs. Restore from the backup once they're in the U.S. Any smart terrorist is going to use the same procedure, so I don't know what's really gained by all these searches and seizures. I guess they keep the dumb terrorists in check, but at the cost of inconveniencing hundreds of millions of travelers and leaving them feeling their privacy has been violated.
"Unreasonable" is a giant loophole, however, you can march a brigade of goons through it... See Border Search Exception...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
"..the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed". Try to go through TSA bearing and keeping Arms. Whenever allow exceptions to made illegally against one right you start to lose all your rights.
That would seem to be incorrect: Border Search Exception.
As long as you are within 100 miles of the US border the 4th amendment does not apply.
Sounds like its still up for legal debate according to the very article you linked. Last sentence of the 'electronic materials' section reads:
"In May of 2018, in U.S. v. Kolsuz, the Fourth Circuit court of appeals has held that it is unconstitutional for US border officials to subject visitors' devices to forensic searches without individualized suspicion of criminal wrongdoing.[20]"
She's not suing CBP. That's pretty stupid since case law says she'd lose under all sorts of "protecting America" style laws.
She's filed a Rule 41(g) Motion instead, or "Motion to Return Property".
In other words, she's basically seeking to have CBP tu "return" all the data they collected from her phone - to not only destroy the images that were created, but any portions thereof, plus to have 3rd parties who many have accessed said image for any reason to again delete that data they may have collected.
Even more, she wants information on what happened to the data, including information on who it may have been provided to for what purposes and such (presumably also to verify that they too have destroyed/returned the data)/
If anything, it's probably a more unique case to go through the courts with and one where she may succeed - it wasn't necessarily wrong to collect the data, but now she's ordering its return and justification for keeping that data. And by "return", legally it means "full deletion" (remember the Waymo vs. Uber? Waymo wanted the "return" of the data which really meant the data was given back and destroyed).
More Details: https://arstechnica.com/tech-p...
The constitution has no such exception. The failure of the courts to enforce the bill of rights doesn't change what it says. This woman's phone was stolen.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Why do we try so hard to try to justify being cruel to other people?
People spend years digging in books from recent to thousands of years to come up with a justification to be cruel to that person who is different.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
If you didn't support Clinton's impeachment and support Trumps, you are a piece of shit.
Clinton's impeachment was over an affair he had, and was a political witch hunt. A Trump impeachment would be over many campaign finance law violations and (possibly) election law violations.
The latter impeachment would be far more justified than the former.
he, NO, your quote is not even correct.
That 4th says...
"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."
Let me break this down. This amendment says the word "unreasonable" but that word is not saying that anything the "government deems" as reasonable is now fair game. The amendment is specifically stating that any "search or seizure" that is NOT accompanied by a WARRANT, particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized, is what the meaning of unreasonable is in the context of the 4th amendment.
Even Star had more restrictions and limited scope than Muller.
Are you seriously trying to claim that an investigation over a failed land deal in Arkansas that ended up charging over a blowjob in the White House decades later was restricted in scope?
Untrue, the constitution still applies in this case. It would even apply within the so-called 100 mile "border zone", it applies in military bases that are overseas, it applies to US protectorates, and so forth. If this were indeed within areas (outside the 200 mile national waters region) it would be considered piracy and many treaties would apply there that the US would be obligated to respect.
I disagree. It was wrong to collect the data. An American should not be treated like a criminal when they come back home.
The Supreme Court has never said that the border control can do whatever they want. The courts said that the fourth amendment still applies at the border but that what is "reasonable" for searches is necessarily expanded at the border. So yes, they can have simple searches of people without giving a reason or a warrant, however in the case of an anal search the court held that probable cause was needed based upon reasonable suspicion. As for taking a cell phone and not returning it for 120 days, I would think that this amounts to unreasonable search and seizure. Or at the very least there's certainly enough doubt that the border control can exert this much power or that the constitution has deteriorated that much that the lawsuit should be allowed to go to court. This is more than a pat-down or opening of bags. Refusing to unlock a phone does not give probable cause that a crime is being committed.
Are you american?
if so you should be aware of the 100 mile excluson zone as well : https://www.aclu.org/other/con...
So you not only dont have "rights" AT the border, but you have limited rights for 100 miles into the country as well.