4 ms·

"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 W

• csours 7y ago
  I suspect you may know this, but there exist many locations and circumstances wherein various rights are suspended. https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone
  • ISL 7y ago
    And yet the fourth amendment says what it says. I'm prepared to agree to disagree with the Supreme Court on the subject, but the bill of rights is, to me, clear.
    • meroes 7y ago
      I cant think of a single amendment that isn't qualified in some way. But kudos if you or someone takes an issue like this to the supreme court.
    • lonelappde 7y ago
      It's important to remember that Courts trade in Opinions not Facts. Their rulings have the force of law, but they aren't always correct, and indeed are often overturned. It's appropriate to have disagreement.
    • roywiggins 7y ago
      The fourth amendment just says searches have to be reasonable, not that they have to be done pursuant to a warrant. What counts as "reasonable" is very much not clear unless you look beyond the text. There's no evidence, for instance, that the fourth amendment was meant to prevent customs checks at the border. Inside the US, customs checks would be unreasonable searches, but at the border they have always been legal. Phone searches are nasty, invasive, and not like a customs check at all. That's why we have courts to distinguish them.
      • ISL 7y ago
        Is a customs check reasonable without probable cause? I understand the pragmatic argument, but not the implicit presumption that an upstanding citizen would come home with contraband.
        • roywiggins 7y ago
          This court decision linked ends up concluding that CBP doesn't need a warrant, but they do need reasonable suspicion- a much lower standard- before performing a search. More than no suspicion, which is what CBP etc were claiming.
          • Slippery_John 7y ago
            I wonder how much effect this will actually have. Will they count rejection of voluntary search as suspicion of wrongdoing?
            • roywiggins 7y ago
              It's a trial court opinion, so quite possibly not much, depending on what precedent gets set on appeal.
            • hannasanarion 7y ago
              "reasonable suspicion" is a term of art, not a new thing that was just invented by the court. There is already an abundance of case law that explains what can count as reasonable suspicion and what can't. Refusing a voluntary search is not enough for reasonable suspicion. Here's an explanation of reasonable suspicion in comic form (part of a larger chapter on 4th amendment law): https://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=1833 https://lawcomic.net/guide/?p=1833
      • nybble41 7y ago
        > The fourth amendment just says searches have to be reasonable, not that they have to be done pursuant to a warrant. The only reason it doesn't say that is that it's inherent in the term "warrant". A warrant is exactly the legal authority to use force on behalf of the government contrary to the rights which the law would normally guarantee, which is a prerequisite for performing any search or seizing any property (absent the owner's consent, of course). Any law purporting to authorize searches is a warrant, though not necessarily a constitutional one. There is no such thing as a legal search or seizure without a warrant. There are only unauthorized, and thus illegal, searches and seizures, and unconstitutional warrants. If "reasonableness" were enough on its own—in other words, if obtaining a warrant were not a necessary part of the process of conducting a search—there would never have been any reason to place further restrictions on the issuance of warrants, and the entire second half of the 4th Amendment would be void.
  • CharlesColeman 7y ago
    > I suspect you may know this, but there exist many locations and circumstances wherein various rights are suspended. It sounds like this recent ruling may have rendered that page out of date. From your link: > According to the government, however, these basic constitutional principles do not apply fully at our borders. For example, at border crossings (also called "ports of entry"), federal authorities do not need a warrant or even suspicion of wrongdoing to justify conducting what courts have called a "routine search," such as searching luggage or a vehicle. From the OP: > In a major victory for privacy rights, a federal court in Boston today ruled that the government’s suspicionless searches of international travelers’ smartphones and laptops at airports and other U.S. ports of entry violate the Fourth Amendment. The ruling came in a lawsuit, Alasaad v. McAleenan, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and ACLU of Massachusetts, on behalf of 11 travelers whose smartphones and laptops were searched without individualized suspicion at U.S. ports of entry.
    • turc1656 7y ago
      "It sounds like this recent ruling may have rendered that page out of date." Not exactly. Here, the only change is related to digital devices being searched. Everything else that happens at the border regarding searches is unchanged. So the limitation of the 4th amendment is still largely unaltered. But the protections have now been extended to digital devices only at border searches. The article doesn't go into it (maybe the actual USSC does?) but I assume the logic here is that the reasoning behind the 4th amendment border search exception in the first place is to monitor what's coming across the border in terms of physical contraband (drugs, guns, animals, foods, etc.). There aren't really any concerns with digital devices. They are legal and anything done with them that might be illegal isn't related to the device crossing the border. And much of what can be done with them can also be done with any cheap device purchased in the states or using a cloud service (in the modern era). So randomly searching the devices doesn't really do much of anything related to border protection.
      • deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      • 7y ago
  • calibas 7y ago
    Saying "rights are suspended" is a very nice way of putting it. Sounds more legit that way than what I call it, "the government breaking it's own laws".
• andrewla 7y ago
  > unreasonable
  • soledades 7y ago
    > suspicionless
• interlocutor 7y ago
  This decision only covers electronic devices. All other items can still be searched without suspicion or warrant at the border, see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception
• paulddraper 7y ago
  To be fair, these searches were prior to entering the United States. In the United States, such an act would clearly be against the 4th Amendment. It was less clear here.
  • Taniwha 7y ago
    But the searches are being done by agents of the government, the constitution limits what the government can do
  • dreamcompiler 7y ago
    What do you mean? The searches happened at US ports of entry on US soil and were conducted by agents of the US government. In many cases the victims were US citizens. It was already a clear 4th amendment violation; the court has merely affirmed that.
    • paulddraper 7y ago
      I understood that someone was denied entry to the U.S. based on a search; i.e. they couldn't enter the U.S.
• solotronics 7y ago
  Now do guns next!