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Same. This has nothing to do with who is leading our country. The only thing new here is that it's easy to point the finger at one person for everything you do
by Mk-0 10y ago
Same.
This has nothing to do with who is leading our country. The only thing new here is that it's easy to point the finger at one person for everything you don't like; it's been in place for awhile now.
- emodendroket 10y agoIs that so? Here's the article's take! > The so-called border search exemption means that the 4th Amendment’s requirement of probable cause does not apply to customs officials, and the practice of “detaining” cellphones began under the George W. Bush administration. But cellphone searches by the Department of Homeland Security have exploded in 2017 — DHS officials searched more phones in February of this year than in all of 2015. (Four members of Congress introduced a bill this week that would require agents to obtain a warrant before searching a U.S. citizen’s electronic device.)
- rileymat2 10y agoIt is odd that they compared to 2015 instead of 2016. There could be a good reason, but it feels manipulative.
- emodendroket 10y agoPerhaps the data was more readily available. Perhaps it made a stronger case for the comparison. Is there some drastic change between 2015 and 2016 I don't know about?
- rileymat2 10y agoI don't know. It is possible, but it is strange that we would have this monthly number, but not have it available for the last year, but then have the previous year.
- matthewmacleod 10y agoI don't think there's anything odd about this at all. It will just be the case that someone looked at the figures, said "Oh, it's interesting that there were more searches in February 2017 than in 2015 overall" and ran with that figure. It's a more interesting comparison than "There was an increase of 142% year-on-year" or whatever the actual figures are.
- rileymat2 10y agoFull Quote: "But cellphone searches by the Department of Homeland Security have exploded in 2017 — DHS officials searched more phones in February of this year than in all of 2015. (Four members of Congress introduced a bill this week that would require agents to obtain a warrant before searching a U.S. citizen’s electronic device.) President Trump’s new security regime wastes yet more of our time and our taxpayer money and shows outright scorn for the spirit of the 4th Amendment." The article is making it look like this is due to Trump, but if there was an ongoing increase for 2 years under Obama that would be manipulative.
- lallysingh 10y agoIt means that while Feb 2017 had a lot of searches, it didn't have as many as 2016 as a whole. It did have more than 2015 as a whole.
- enknamel 10y agoIt also needs to be normalized with how many people are crossing the border. Did international travel "explode" as well? I have no idea. Absolute numbers don't really mean anything here. The rate is what matters.
- emodendroket 10y agoIf you're going to throw out all these unlikely theories why don't you look up the data and see if there is any reason to believe them? I'd bet dollars to doughnuts there were not more foreign visitors to the United States in February than there were throughout the entirety of 2015.
- enknamel 10y agoRates and statistics matter. News organizations tend to pick out whatever statistic meets their narrative (just look up all the analysis of the pay gap but that's a whole nother can of worms). Are more phones entering the country? Are more phones entering from countries that should have additional screening? Just saying it's absolutely gone up doesn't reflect the true situation.
- emodendroket 10y agoUh huh. Maybe that's it. Everyone started carrying ten phones.