With United States v. Smith (S.D.N.Y. May 11, 2023), a district court judge in New York made history by being the first court to rule that a warrant is required for a cell phone search at the border, “absent exigent circumstances” (although other district courts have wanted to do so).
EFF is thrilled about this decision, given that we have been advocating for a warrant for border searches of electronic devices in the courts and Congress for nearly a decade. If the case is appealed to the Second Circuit, we urge the appellate court to affirm this landmark decision.
Of course, a decision like this can go through quite a few more courts, but it’s a good precedent.
Wow, a court siding against the government and for the constitution? What a novelty! Haha.
Joking aside, it often does feel like border patrol have been allowed to skirt the laws in the name of security, but as the article points out their justifications can be incredibly thin while the harm to privacy is great. A lot of police in general seem to feel entitled to violate the constitution and some courts give them the green light to do it. A constitution only carries weight if those in highly responsible positions see to it that it gets followed, for better or worse. At least these days the public have access to personal video recording (and freedom of information act to get police body cams) to to protect themselves from the most flagrant abuses.
https://ij.org/case/nevada-civil-forfeiture/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkeS_0NQUZs
For all the problems we have with corruption and even literal theft, video is a powerful tool to establish that facts are on your side whereas previously police typically got the benefit of doubt by default. Alas, border patrol might try to jerk you around if you try and record the encounter to protect yourself from false police narratives.
https://www.trucknews.com/security/dash-cams-illegal-border-depend-way-youre-headed/1003059630/
I haven’t had a bad encounter at the border, but I have been stopped at one of several local police roadblocks that detain large numbers of vehicles without cause in a fishing expedition. I feel this violates the search and seizure clause of the constitution, but the supreme court have given police the green light because they can slip in under the ambiguous wording of “reasonable”. The trouble is that many police use pretextual stops as an excuse for originating the stops and then proceed to go fishing, and it feels incredibly abusive. Border crossing checkpoints are more reasonable IMHO, but I think the public’s right to record their interactions should be explicit. Unfortunately the authors of the constitution couldn’t foresee this technology and how it would be important in protecting us from abuse.
Alfman,
I think it is called “ratcheting”.
Once government gets to taste something, they pretty much cannot stop. No amount of data showing it being harmful will be enough. So it takes a very long process through some determined judges or a grassroots movement to fix it.
Why are we still?
– Subsidizing corn? When we have healthier alternatives
– Subsidizing oil?
– Making building permit process extremely expensive, when millions are homeless?
– Keeping TSA around, when they fail almost every inspection?
– Not allowing insulin imports from neighboring countries when people are literally dying because of high prices?
We can go on. However there is this effect of many people losing a small thing vs. a small group losing a lot. Every time we want to fix agriculture, you’d have hundreds of farmers show up with their tractors. Each of us individually lose some portion of our health, and maybe a few years from our lifetime, but cutting off obsolete subsidies would mean they would be out of a job.
Same with everything else.
It does not help that even some blatant errors from judiciary goes on with no penalties to the emitter with the excuse of “after all, we are also humans and, as so, error-prone from time to time” when they get due attention. Compare that with what you may get on other professions.
There is an old joke that say something like: “judges think they are God; supreme court judges know they are.”
acobar,
I know right. And it’s worse when the judges themselves are corrupt. Fortunately I’ve never needed to go to court, however my wife got issued a summons for passing one of those school bus stop signs. Obviously the intent there is to product children, which we all agree is important at least when thinking of the “normal” violations. However in her case it was an accidental deployment of the stop sign on a six lane highway in moving traffic. This was all on video mind you, so it’s not even a case of he said/she said. We read the law and it clearly and specifically only authorizes the county to issue fines at bus stops where buses stop to pick up students, so we thought: hey, this is an accidental deployment lasting less than a second and additionally the law is explicit, the school bus stop signs are not to be used except at school bus stops, this is a six lane highway with no bus stops. So while the automated citation was erroneous, at least we were confident that the judge would follow the written law and fix it.
Oh how misplaced this faith was! The judge would not admit the law into the record saying it doesn’t matter what the law says as he already knows it’s intentions. He went ahead and issued a $250 fine without considering any facts other than that automated system recorded my wife’s car. This could happen to literally any innocent person. Slamming on the breaks on a highway within a second’s notice is neither reasonable nor is it required by law. I don’t know if the judge was having a bad day that made him incapable of performing his duties, if he was being sexist, just enjoyed the power trips, or maybe he automatically rubber stamps all fines that pay his salary, but whatever his reason for ignoring the law there wasn’t even a semblance of due process. Courts like his make a mockery of the US justice system and I think legitimizing people’s disdain for their own governments is extremely dangerous to democracy. If there were justice, the judge would be reprimanded/fired and his cases retried to give defendants the due process they were supposed to be entitled to in the first place.
acobar,
I agree 100%. The governments do really essential work. However at the same time there have no accountability, except the ballot box. Even then, they have already “retired” with millions in ill gains.
Any other profession would at least cause an immediate inquiry. However government employees can get away with fireable or even jailable offenses without even a “slip on the wrist”. (Like prosecutors withholding evidence that exonerate their victims). Anyway, that is a very long topic.
Alfman,
Sorry to hear what you and your wife had gone through. It is usually not that $250, but the loss of trust and emotional toll that hits.
sukru,
Yes. No accountability is exactly the problem! And I agree it’s not enough to vote them out after they’ve already gotten away with breaking laws with no penalty or reparations for doing so.
Integrity is hard to keep when corruption pays better and gets you in the good graces of those in power.
I don’t know about you, but I start to question my own values whenever I view corruption through the lenses of the theory of darwinian evolution. The good guys are just there for exploiting. Those without hangups like right and wrong can take from others without remorse
There was this exact thing one year for Burning Man. This was pre-event, so folks coming in to volunteer, build art, build camps, etc. There were literal teams of law enforcement, complete with drug dogs, that would just sit there and if you went 1mph over (there are a few little towns on the road where speed limit really slows down fast), they’d pull you over, make up an excuse and pull all your carefully packed, barely fitting stuff out on the side of the road “because the dog alerted”. It was a fundraiser shakedown, literally, that’s all it was.
I’m all for pulling someone over for going too fast going through those small towns, knock yourself out. If you see something out in the open that’s clearly illegal, ok, go for it. But all this was was just a way to hassle us and generate law enforcement income. Besides the vast amount of money they force BOrg to pay for them to be present at the event so they can (mostly) try and entrap folks just trying to have a good time.
All that said…yes, there does need to be some presence at the event, it’s so large there are times when it’s the correct response is to have law enforcement come over and handle whatever it is. But they’re not trying to help/protect us mostly. They’re just trying to give out tickets and extract cash for their particular organization.
Drizzt321,
Yeah, I can sympathize. There’s protecting and serving the public, and then there’s harassing the public to fill quotas and generate revenue streams. Most of us aren’t “anti-police”, but rather anti-police abuse. There is a legitimate need for the public to be protected especially when situations call for them, but to have teams of officers paid to harass the public at roadblocks and looking for things to randomly charge us with, well frankly they are hurting society more than helping. It shouldn’t be their job to interfere with our lives. We can protest it, but unfortunately the public don’t really get much of a say.
I am also very happy and support this decision of the US federal government. Although, I do not understand much about the law as well as politics, I always hope that the law is implemented at the right time and in the right place to prevent evil. Besides that, I usually keep track of https://eggycarunblocked.com. This is truly one of the coolest sites I’ve ever come across.