SoylentNews

New Bill Would Outlaw Warrantless Phone Searches At The Border

posted by martyb on Wednesday April 05 2017, @01:06PM   
from the (privacy++) dept.

Fnord666 writes:

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

---

Original Submission

• Likely stillborn Likely stillborn (Score: 3, Insightful) by DavePolaschek on Wednesday April 05 2017, @01:31PM (1 child)

  by DavePolaschek (6129) on Wednesday April 05 2017, @01:31PM (#489130) Homepage Journal

  According to https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/04/lawmakers-propose-law-requiring-warrants-to-search-electronics-at-us-border/ [arstechnica.com]:

  It's doubtful that the rest of Congress will listen to these lawmakers and adopt this legislation. For starters, John Kelly, the DHS secretary, won't even respond to Wyden's call to answer a few basic questions about how the border search exception is used in practice.

  As we're seeing with the ISP privacy law, there's privacy for Congress, and then there's privacy for the rest of us, which is an entirely different privacy. Some animals truly are more equal than others.

  Starting Score:	1		point
  Moderation		+2
  Insightful=1, Informative=1, Total=2
  Extra 'Insightful' Modifier		0
  Total Score:		3

• Re:Likely stillborn (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @02:32AM

  by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 06 2017, @02:32AM (#489478)

  As we're seeing with the ISP privacy law, there's privacy for Congress, and then there's privacy for the rest of us,

  What? There is no exemption for congressional privacy in the recently passed rollback of restrictions on ISPs trafficing in their customer's privacy.

  Parent