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Four privacy-minded lawmakers have introduced legislation requiring law enforcement officials to obtain a warrant before searching phones belonging to US citizens, and prohibiting them from barring entry to Americans who decline to share their passwords at the border.
"Americans' Constitutional rights shouldn't disappear at the border," Senator Ron Wyden said in statement to BuzzFeed News. "By requiring a warrant to search Americans' devices and prohibiting unreasonable delay, this bill makes sure that border agents are focused on criminals and terrorists instead of wasting their time thumbing through innocent Americans' personal photos and other data."
[...] The bill would require law enforcement to establish probable cause before searching or seizing a phone belonging to an American. "Manual searches," in which a border agent flips through a person's stored pictures would be covered under the proposed law as well. But the bill does allow for broad emergency exceptions.
"The government should not have the right to access your personal electronic devices without probable cause," Rep. Polis told BuzzFeed news in a statement. "Whether you are at home, walking down the street, or at the border, we must make it perfectly clear that our Fourth Amendment protections extend regardless of location. This bill is overdue, and I am glad we can come together in a bicameral, bipartisan manner to ensure that Customs and Border Patrol agents don't continue to violate essential privacy safeguards."
Source: Buzzfeed
(Score: 4, Informative) by lx on Wednesday April 05 2017, @01:23PM (10 children)
Great. I'll go somewhere else on holiday.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 05 2017, @01:48PM (9 children)
I'm not from the US, but I can't find anything in the constitution that would limit the fourth amendment to US citizens only.
"The right of the people to be secure " Can't find a definition of "the people" in it. I'm not trying that hard, as it wouldn't change my mind on travelling to the US anytime soon anyway.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Wednesday April 05 2017, @02:57PM (4 children)
It's not the law that says foreigners have no rights, but the law has to be applied by people, and we've become an ugly culture that no longer believes in rights or even understands them.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 05 2017, @03:35PM
Shining city on the hill inDEED.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Wednesday April 05 2017, @05:02PM
Not to mention the seeming perception that the Constitution is something to be worked around rather than obeyed these days.
Anyone who can't see that the data on electronic devices equates to "papers" in "persons, houses, papers, and effects" is being intentionally blind. But hey, we can be forced to give up our encryption keys so they can parallel construct a reason for having arrested us in the first place, so fuck everything. Our government is ethically bankrupt.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 4, Interesting) by NotSanguine on Wednesday April 05 2017, @07:53PM (1 child)
I've been making that point for years, it's absolutely true. The Constitution just speaks of the rights of the people.
It's not the law that says foreigners have no rights, but the law has to be applied by people, and we've become an ugly culture that no longer believes in rights or even understands them.
According to this analysis [findlaw.com]:
Given the above, I guess that those who are not residents of the U.S. shouldn't come here if they value their privacy.
That's sad.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by Arik on Thursday April 06 2017, @01:15AM
Or anything else. The decision may be specific to privacy rights but the rationale implicates ALL human rights.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2) by linkdude64 on Wednesday April 05 2017, @08:04PM (2 children)
The Constitution does not grant us rights, nor does the government.
Our rights are "God-Given", and the Constitution exists to specify those unalienable rights against attack from the Government, which is subordinate to the Constitution, in principle, though it does interpret it.
The issue is that people seem to flock to this country that they hate so much, and yet, they want to live here and enjoy the milk and honey, so they vote for larger government which increases infringement on those rights.
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Thursday April 06 2017, @01:03AM (1 child)
Our rights are "God-Given"
Ahhh, that explains why our rights are being treated like toilet paper, then. No court to my knowledge has ever admitted evidence that any type of gods even exist.
I would prefer to say that the people grant limited powers to their governments.
And yes, obviously, "the people" includes all, ummm, people.
When a court conjures up some complicated definition of "people" I want to remind them that the Constitution establishes the courts and is therefore superior. No court ruling can redefine the plain language of the Constitution.
(Score: 4, Touché) by c0lo on Thursday April 06 2017, @12:57PM
Mmm... do they recognize "acts of God"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @03:36AM
"The people," to American's founders, had a meaning roughly equivalent to one's "peeps," "posse," "homies" or "crew" today.