That searches made at the border, pursuant to the longstanding right of the sovereign to protect itself by stopping and examining persons and property crossing into this country, are reasonable simply by virtue of the fact that they occur at the border, should, by now, require no extended demonstration.

Acidus mentioned that he wanted to read some of the precidents for random border searches.

US v. Ramsey

...that when this country was first founded international travel was expensive and rare. It mostly occured for the purposes of commercial shipping. Neighboring Canada and Mexico were actively hostile countries. The things searched for at these borders were likely limited in scope to commercial tarrif enforcement and possibly espionage. A great deal has changed in 200 years. Neighboring Canada and Mexico are no longer enemies. The cost and time involved in international travel has plummeted, and the amount of travel has exploded. Furthermore, the things searched for have expanded far beyond enforcement of commerical tarrifs to include personal contraban of various sorts, personal import limits, intellectual property crimes, and anti-terrorism. Essentially, the number of people travelling has gone way up and the intrusivness of searches has gone way up, and so the psychological impact of these searches has increased. What before might have seemed reasonable now feels very much like the actions of a police state, and may no longer be Constitutionally sound (in fact if not as a matter of law).

I flew into SFO (San Francisco) from Asia in May 2006.

I went straight to the customs agent as I had no luggage.

The agent asked to go through my only bag.

I gave him my bag.

The agent took out my laptop and turned it on.

He then asked for my password

He said that he wanted to verify that I had no illegal content on my hard drive...

While operating my laptop he said that we was tasked with preventing illegal pornographic material from entering the United States

Travis Kalanick
Red Swoosh, Inc.
Founder, CEO

These things usually make me angry. This just makes me sad. The difference is that I don't think there is anything that can be done to stop this. I think this means we've already lost. I beleive that the fact that these searches occur at an international border does not make them per say reasonable. The world is much smaller then it used to be. These searches have nothing to do with protecting national security. They are a dragnet setup in a Constitutional loophole that millions pass through every day. Furthermore, the contents of one's laptop are the closest physical thing to the contents of one's head. And the police are rifling through them at random. And there isn't a damn thing that can be done about it. We learned these lessons of history the hard way, and now we've forgotten and we're going to learn them the hard way again, and there is no stopping it. Communism may have lost, but Authoritarianism has won.

Yes they ARE doing random laptop searches at borders

Three-judge panel unanimously says that border police may conduct random searches of laptops without search warrants or probable cause. These searches can include seizing the laptop and subjecting it to extensive forensic analysis.

This really isn't anything new. Travel outside the country has always implied a complete sacrifice of civil liberties. I'm not convinced that this is a good idea. The Constitution prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures. In an environment where people are constantly streaming across borders, random intrusive searches for any evidence of any crime goes far beyond the notion of border protection for national security purposes and becomes exactly the sort of dragnet that the Constitution was intended to prohibit. This seems rather obvious when you are talking about random forensic analysis of computers.

Frankly, I'm also becoming concerned about the war on child pornography possession. Although possession of child pornography certainly should be illegal, 10 and 15 year manditory prison sentences for clicking on the wrong website seems unreasonable. When you pile on the specter of random computer forensic analysis at border crossings and long term data retention requirements, the result is that you have something which threatens to do far more damage to civil liberties then the drug war ever did. Is this really necessary to protect children, or is it a political system running amuck with an emotionally charged issue?

Police blotter: Laptop border searches OK'd | CNET News.com

Just a thought on the supposed congeniality of the "new" court: In Justice Breyer's dissent, he questions the logic of the majority opinion and refers to the majority, not as "the majority" or as "the Court," but instead, singles out the author---Justice Scalia---for its faults. On page 25 of the dissent, Breyer writes "How can Justice Scalia maintain that the evidence here---a gun and drugs seized in the home---is not the fruit of the illegal entry."

I would speculate that until Justice Alito joined the court and made his intentions clear regarding this case, following re-argument, the decision was 5-4 the other way with Justice Breyer writing for the court and Justice Scalia writing the dissent. Following the switch, the two opinions changed places, and Breyer's law clerk may simply have neglected to make this one change, which would be far more in line with protocol were it contained in the opinion of the court, which often refers to dissenters by name.

Interesting data point.

The Volokh Conspiracy - 4th amendment decision

Prosecutors said officers shouted "Police, search warrant," but readily admit that they did not knock on the door and that they waited only three to five seconds before entering and finding Hudson sitting on his couch. He was eventually convicted of drug possession.

"People have the right to answer the door in a dignified manner," Hudson's lawyer David Moran had told the high court. The justices have ruled in the past that police should announce their presence, then normally wait 15 to 20 seconds before bursting into a home.

I chose to meme this article because the headline is extremely misleading. That seems par for the course for Supreme Court reporting.

By law, when the police serve a warrant at your house, they are supposed to give you enough time to put your shirt back on before they barge in. This isn't really to protect you from the search. This is simply a matter of dignity. This headline makes it seem as if this is no longer the law, because the court refused to suppress evidence in this case. That is not at all correct.

In this case the evidence that was found was exactly what was described in the warrant. Had circumstances been different, the result might have also been different. It depends.

In any event, we're really talking about a 12-17 second difference here, not a huge period of time, this sort of entry is still illegal, and there are civil remedies that can be sought if it is employed. If they literally "catch you with your pants down" you might have a significant wad of cash coming your way, although there is some debate about that.

The bottom line is that the correctness of this decision is debatable. I won't fault you for not liking it. But, either way its not a big deal. It just so happens that this is exactly what I think about Kelo v. New London.

Kelo is debatable, but its not a big deal. However, the right wing has engaged in a highly organized campaign of grossly mischaracterizing the scope of the decision in order to promote the political idea that the court system is out of control. This election season is fraught with local legislative campaigns to "stick it to the Supreme Court" by doing exactly what the court intended by having local referrenda on the scope of eminent domain! No, Kelo doesn't let them take your house just because they want to build a Walmart. There are extremely limited circumstances in which Kelo applies.

The ultimate irony of this is that on almost every issue the right thinks the court system is "out of control" in so far is it protects individual rights from the excesses of the legislature, and yet they prop Kelo up as if its representative of the political goal they are trying to achieve. It isn't.

So, if the left decides to, well, grossly mischaracterize the scope of this new 4th amendment decision, and goes nuts claiming the court is too conservative, well, its dishonest, but I have to admit that its well deserved.

CNN.com - Police don't have to knock, justices say - Jun 15, 2006

Jim Harper left his hotel early Thursday at 5:30 a.m. to give himself more than two hours to clear security at San Francisco International Airport. It wasn't that he was worried the security line would be long, but because he accepted a dare from civil liberties rabble-rouser John Gilmore to test whether he could actually fly without showing identification.

Gilmore issued the challenge at Wednesday's meeting of the Department of Homeland Security's privacy advisory committee in San Francisco.

This is interesting. A member of the DHS privacy advisory committe takes Gilmore's challenge on and sails through SFO. Some of the comments attached are interesting, as well as Edward Hasbrouck's blog post. Apparently if you want to fly without showing ID you just tell them you lost your wallet and they have a process for that. Its when you start yammering about the Constitution that they fuck with you.

Wired News: The Great No-ID Airport Challenge

"If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged." - Cardinal Richelieu

... who was, by the way, an authoritarian monster who likely said these words in all seriousness and not to make any point about privacy.

Schneier on Security: The Value of Privacy

AT&T claims information in the file is proprietary and that it would suffer severe harm if it were released.

Based on what we've seen, Wired News disagrees. In addition, we believe the public's right to know the full facts in this case outweighs AT&T's claims to secrecy.

Wired has now published ALL of the AT&T documents. I agree with Wired that this information doesn't create a competitive problem for AT&T. AT&T is playing the proprietary card for technical reasons. I also don't think that publishing this information harms national security. Basically, yawn, there is nothing here that indicates that this is anything more then a CALEA compliance room. Mind you, the problem with CALEA is that it creates all of the infrastructure needed to allow access to all of the content, and anyone who had access to the content, or possibly anyone who can guess your SNMPv3 password, can pretty much do whatever they want with it so long as they don't get caught. This is why civil libertarians opposed CALEA. However, proving that the intercepts in this case aren't lawful is going to take more evidence than this.

Wired News: Why We Published the AT&T Docs

Mr. Gonzales said that the administration promoted and respected the right of the press that is protected under the First Amendment. "But it can't be the case that that right trumps over the right that Americans would like to see, the ability of the federal government to go after criminal activity," he said.

U: You can download the video. This IS essentially what he said. He kind of stumbles around a bit and its a live interview and an unanticipated question. If this wording appeared in print it would be a more serious problem. As it is, its troubling, but it remains to be seen what they are going to do.

Its also worth pointing out that the question he was asked was about the collection of dialed phone number information from journalists. The answer he gave was about the legal authorization process that he goes through before doing content surveillance, which is NOT dialed phone number information. He simply answered a totally unrelated question. Most viewers would not pick up on the distinction.

Gonzales Says Prosecutions of Journalists Are Possible - New York Times