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"More recently I was made to wonder: Does the 4th Amendment apply to Muslim citizens at LAX?" Well, no actually, it does not. Nor does it apply to non-Muslim c
by jonstokes 10y ago
"More recently I was made to wonder: Does the 4th Amendment apply to Muslim citizens at LAX?"
Well, no actually, it does not. Nor does it apply to non-Muslim citizens, or white citizens, or any other types of citizens.
And excuse me, but you were just "recently" made to wonder about this? Only recently?!?
We apparently decided after 9/11 that airports and any place within 100 miles of the border were going to be Constitution-free zones, where the laws around search and seizure just do not apply to anyone.
The following happened to me, for instance, in an airport in 2006:
https://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2006/05/6767-2/ https://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2006/05/6767-2/
This is one of those things that kills me -- those of us whining about all this, especially under Obama, were "shrill" civil libertarians. But then Trump came to power.
Now that this crap is happening under Trump, and it's happening to ACLU lawyers and doctors and newspaper journos and so on (cue the scary music), it's suddenly a crisis, and people's hair is on fire.
It was a crisis over a decade ago, when we just abandoned the Constitution in airports and at borders. And the warning that civil libertarians gave, which was roundly ignored, was "wait until the wrong person gets hold of this power."
- maxerickson 10y agoThe history of aggressive border searches goes back a little further than 9/11. Like to ~1800.
- huffmsa 10y agoWait until that guy finds out they used to get to turn you around and ship you back if they didn't like the way you looked
- tptacek 10y agoThe hundred-mile border thing is a myth; it refers to a SCOTUS holding that limits searches with a nexus to a border crossing to within that distance, but does not allow CBP to search people who haven't transacted directly with the border in some way. ACLU, which I otherwise support wholeheartedly, does us all a mild disservice by perpetuating the myth, which is very widely believed.
- specialp 10y agoReally? What about the checkpoints that are set up within this zone stopping and questioning people without reasonable suspicion or knowledge that person crossed the border at all. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ea_VMY0UnA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ea_VMY0UnA
- tptacek 10y agoThe border search exemption applies only to people who have transacted directly with a border. Being 20 miles from a border gives CBP no special powers over ordinary citizens.
- tunap 10y agoCBP routinely stops & questions all north-bound traffic on US 54 >20 miles north-east of El Paso. Am unsure of the distance, but they did request opening my rear hatch(SUV) to facilitate the dog sniffing my parts boxes and tools. Am pretty sure the checkpoints on I-10 in western AZ are >100 miles N of the border, the Tohono O'odham* rez lies between I-10 & the border. * The elders have also stated no wall will be built on their lands. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tohono_O%27odham#Border_issues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tohono_O%27odham#Border_issues
- desdiv 10y agoYou might have hit one of these: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Border_Patrol_interior_checkpoints#Arizona https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Border_Patrol_in...
- literallycancer 10y agoAre there any cases of people suing the CBP for unlawful restraint? I remember seeing a video a while back where the guy wouldn't get out of the car, and they just broke the windows and took him out anyway.
- desdiv 10y ago
- djsumdog 10y agoEven prior to 9/11[1], you didn't have any rights at the border. As stated in other comments, most of the bill of rights doesn't apply at national borders, even for US citizens. But I totally agree with you. We had eight years of domestic spying, increased TSA nonsense (I no longer fly within the US. I wish more Americas would refuse to fly), predator drones, secret kill lists and the first president in history to spend every day of this tenure at war. I wish everyone who is out protesting now was protesting just as loud during the Obama years instead of falling into the false left/right divide: http://fightthefuture.org/articles/the-fallout-of-american-anger/ http://fightthefuture.org/articles/the-fallout-of-american-a... [1] What's the difference between 9/11 and a cow. You can't milk a cow for 16 years.
- pmoriarty 10y agoThere have been dozens if not hundreds of articles questioning the legality of searches at airports since 9/11. They're not a new phenomenon that suddenly started under the Trump administration.
- sammydavis 10y agoCorrect. They have gotten worse though. And even if you believe nothing changed, it's terrible and we need to stop it.
- justin66 10y ago> The following happened to me, for instance, in an airport in 2006: A guy carrying a weapon into an airport. An old woman with a back brace who has done nothing wrong. Yeah, it's almost exactly the same thing!
- jonstokes 10y agoWhy be obtuse? My point was obviously about suspension of 4A and Miranda rights.
- KKKKkkkk1 10y agoIf I'm not mistaken, the Supreme Court made a ruling that searching a person's belongings without probable cause is ok if that person is traveling. It was in 1973, way before 9/11.
- leereeves 10y agoThere seems to be a lot of outrage about searching electronic devices lately, especially among the tech crowd, but legally there's no reason why a phone or laptop should be immune to search while suitcases and briefcases aren't. I think it's finally becoming more common because the government is slow to adapt and they're only just now developing the tools to conduct these searches.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- maxerickson 10y agobut legally there's no reason why a phone or laptop should be immune to search If the pretext is border security, there is a small difference, the documents stored on an electronic device won't explode or start firing bullets or be used in a stabbing (the contents of a case might). We should absolutely fix the lack of foundational privacy laws in the US though.
- leereeves 10y agoBut the contents of a phone might be a recipe for homemade explosives or drugs, or a blueprint for a 3D printed gun, or the schedule for an attack.
- maxerickson 10y agoYou think it is a good use of resources to scan devices crossing the border for such easy to obtain information? Really? Of course the attack schedule is not easily obtained, but just asking such a dumb terrorist if they are a terrorist should be similarly effective.
- thomastjeffery 10y agoMost Americans are not the sort with the knee-jerk "Think of the children!" reaction. The problem is that most sane Americans do not vote. Our political landscape is such a mess that Americans don't want to think about politics, and so their opinion is drowned out by fear-driven activism. If I understand terrorism, I will not react to it irrationally. The rational reaction is, in fact, no reaction at all. The problem is that those who do react to terrorism react in fear. They push this agenda of security over liberty. In order to overcome this idiotic agenda, those of us who are sane enough not to react, must actually take action. We must actually vote. We must actually talk politics, instead of going on with the things we find more immediately important, we must actually take political action. It has just been too damn hard to get that to happen, so here we are.