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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: 2) by Zinho on Wednesday April 05 2017, @05:31PM (3 children)
Better source than buzzfeed: thehill.com [thehill.com]
For those of us willing to give support to the bill, contact your senators [senate.gov] and representatives. [house.gov]
Mention the bill by name:
Protecting Data at the Border Act
Bonus points if you're in one of the sponsors' states: encourage your congress members to support their local colleague. If one of the sponsors is your representative or senator, call and thank them.
Small acts of support add up.
"Space Exploration is not endless circles in low earth orbit." -Buzz Aldrin
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday April 05 2017, @05:52PM (2 children)
Since it's not mentioned in the summary, the 4 privacy minded politicians who deserve some props:
Ron Wyden (D) - Oregon
Rand Paul (R) - Kentucky
Jared Polis (D) - Colorado
Blake Farenthold (R) - Texas
Glad to see it's bi-partisan...
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Wednesday April 05 2017, @06:21PM
That is nice to see. Also, perhaps to correct the summary, (or perhaps I'm wring): I don't think they can refuse entry to an American citizen for not providing passwords with things as they stand now, they can just be a pain in the ass, and seize and make copies of your devices. Non US citizens have always been able to be refused for any reason whatsoever. That's fine, but they really need to stop stating that they don't discriminate based of race,religion, politics, gender, etc, as that's blatantly untrue.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Kromagv0 on Wednesday April 05 2017, @07:01PM
Wyden and Paul don't surprise me but I haven't heard of the other 2. Which being senators not from my state is probably a good thing since that means they likely aren't a giant flaming bags of stupid shit. This must mean that all 4 are terrorist loving alt-right commie Kenyan Muslim Klan fascists hell bent on stealing my gun, bible, and pirating copies of Batman Vs. Superman Dawn of Justice and the Hottie and the Nottie while setting up death panels and denying abortion to unborn baby whales who are suffering under global cooling. Or that is how they will be portrayed in the media shortly.
T-Shirts and bumper stickers [zazzle.com] to offend someone