Thread

Border agents can search cellphones without a warrant or reasonable suspicion

235 points · 198 comments · mmh0000

mmh0000 · 1789758170 · focus · HN ↗
It is insane to me that judges consistently rule that the constitution doesn't apply because there's a "border" within 100 miles.
The 4th Amendment says, exactly:
```
   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.
```
I do not know how that could be unclear. My cellphone is my effect, and arguably, also a "paper". Which SHALL NOT BE VIOLATED. But apparently, I'm too dumb to understand the sentence[1].
[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution#Border_search_exception" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Amendment_to_the_United...
1. rtkwe · 1789759923 · focus · HN ↗
  So the main argument is that in the time that was written and immediately afterwards we can look to see what they mean by that by how it was implemented. At the time it was understood that the government could and would search goods as they enter the country without warrants to enforce things like tariffs. I think that's a fairly reasonable interpretation of the meaning. Where I think this goes wrong (and maybe deviates from history?) is the conflation of papers and other digital records now with physical goods, historically were people's papers searched as they entered the country (beyond say looking through them to find hidden goods, I mean reading and examining letters and records)?
  1. alistairSH · 1789761089 · focus · HN ↗
    But the 100 mile rule? That covers damn near everybody in the US (>200 million, or 66%, give or take) subject to warrantless searches on the whim of whatever the police want?
    SoftTalker · 1789761686 · focus · HN ↗
    It's more than that, it's being "close" to a border (you can argue if 100 miles is "close") and not on a whim but reason to believe you recently crossed it.
    CamperBob2 · 1789762113 · focus · HN ↗
    I've heard (but can't back up) that any city with an international airport counts as a 'border' for this purpose.
    SoftTalker · 1789762502 · focus · HN ↗
    Probably. If international flights are arriving, why wouldn't it?
    ndriscoll · 1789762823 · focus · HN ↗
    Because you can't exactly sneak on/off of an international airplane. It should be pretty trivial for customs to funnel travelers through a checkpoint where they can search at the time of the actual border crossing.
    Likewise we now have the technology to automatically surveil the border 24/7 (maybe modulo tunnels, though I wouldn't be surprised if we could detect those too?), so a 100-mile exception only ever becomes more and more dubious. We could've built the wall and lined it with a surveillance system for less than the cost of this Iran war (never mind all the m̶o̶n̶e̶y̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶n̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ stimulus this decade), shutting up the whole border debate once and for all, and ending justifications for internal surveillance for trafficking.
    tonyarkles · 1789764445 · focus · HN ↗
    > Because you can't exactly sneak on/off of an international airplane.
    I'm actually pretty curious about this. You can't easily sneak on/off a commercial international airplane, but that's because they've got the gates set up in the airport to funnel you through a specific path that leads to customs. Showing up on an international charter or GA flight seems squishier. <a href="http://www.canada.eaachapter.org/FLYING%20TO%20and%20FROM%20CANADA%202024.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.canada.eaachapter.org/FLYING%20TO%20and%20FROM%20... The process seems to be that you schedule an ETA, taxi to a CBP station and wait there until a CBP officer arrives.
    On the other side of it, it looks like CANPASS would let you land in Canada even if the CBSA station is closed...
    rtkwe · 1789777162 · focus · HN ↗
    It's still quite hard to sneakily fly into the US in a GA or charter plane and land unexpectedly at an international airport which is why they seem to not count. I say that because places like the SBCC don't include 100 mile bubbles around international airports on their maps of the issue.
    <a href="https://www.southernborder.org/100_mile_border_enforcement_zone" rel="nofollow">https://www.southernborder.org/100_mile_border_enforcement_z...

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