Court curbs laptop searches at U.S. border By Stephen Dinan - The Washington Times Friday, March 8, 2013 A federal appeals court on Friday said Customs and Border Protection officers cannot confiscate or download every laptop or electronic device brought into the U.S., ruling that people have an expectation their data are private and that the government must have “reasonable suspicion” before it starts to do any intensive snooping. In a broad ruling, the court also said merely putting password protection on information is not enough to trigger the government’s “reasonable suspicion” to conduct a more intrusive search — but can be taken into account along with other factors. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals judges said it was a “watershed care” that gets at what kinds of limits the government must observe when it comes to technology and privacy. “Electronic devices often retain sensitive and confidential information far beyond the perceived point of erasure, notably in the form of browsing histories and records of deleted files,” Judge M. Margaret McKeown wrote in the majority opinion. “This quality makes it impractical, if not impossible, for individuals to make meaningful decisions regarding what digital content to expose to the scrutiny that accompanies international travel. A person’s digital life ought not be hijacked simply by crossing a border.” The ruling says that Americans who carry laptops or other electronic devices when they go out in public have some expectation that that information is not open to a search if they made an effort to protect it. Privacy advocates cheered the decision, saying that the government had previously believed it had the right to copy all electronic data of anyone crossing into the U.S. “But in today’s watershed ruling, the court drew a line in the sand and recognized that the vast amount of personal information and sensitive data on laptops, cell phones, and other electronic devices is worthy of Fourth Amendment protection,” said Michael Price, a lawyer for the Brennan Center for Justice. The ruling, by the entire 9th Circuit, overturns a previous decision by a three-judge panel of the court. In most cases, the government needs probable cause to conduct a search. Reasonable suspicion is a lower standard. But the Obama administration had argued it didn’t need any reason to search. The court rejected that, ruling that password-protected files are exactly what the Constitution’s framers had in mind when they wrote the Fourth Amendment protecting Americans’ “papers” from unreasonable searches.
@DMGoddess, Yes that is. 16Gb encrypted with a 6-17 digit passcode that after 5 attempts key automatically changes and the data goes buhbye.
"But in today’s watershed ruling, the court drew a line in the sand" I'd prefer it were chiseled in stone. Sand lines can be washed. There have to be limits to intrusion for citizens. Non citizens, well, I'm of two minds on that.
@BTPost This one is even more fun. If someone tries to put in say a number that was easily identifiable as me, like my ssn or driver license number, that would be bad because, it may just be the self destruct key. Probably the one i'd give up during rubber hose interrogation. Yeah, somebody shouldn't have sent me back the money I paid in taxes this year. Guess where MonkeyNet is?
G. for this to come from the 9th Circus, the most liberal Federal Appeals Court, in the land, This is definitely a Watershed Ruling, and very likely to be upheld in ALL the other Federal Appeals Courts as a Precedent. That makes it a Cast in Stone Ruling, for all Practical Purposes... and not likely to be appealed to SCOTUS... .....
Yeah, I know. Likely or not, rulings have been meddled with in the past, and presently Roe v Wade is getting "re-evaluated" for relevance. There's a better argument for 2A since it predates the Constitution, and even that is under attack.
Actually the Bill of Rights was added nearly 3 years after Constitution was ratified but I am like you Ghrit and believe it seriously predates the Constitution as the Bill of Rights only enumerates man's rights that were God given...................... so a really long long time ago right ?
Pretty amazing - the ninth circuit of all courts. Never would have expected them to uphold any of the Constitutional amendments. That fourth amendment suspension reached from the border to 100 miles inside the country. That included not only vehicles crossing the border (or shores), but almost 2/3 of the US population lives within that zone. So computers and cell phones with one's home could as well be confiscated.
