Laptops fair game for airport customs searches

Customs agents at U.S. airports don’t need any evidence of wrongdoing to search the contents of passengers’ laptop computers, a federal appeals court ruled Monday.

Reinstating child pornography evidence against a passenger at Los Angeles International Airport, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said a computer is no different from a suitcase, a car or any other piece of property subject to search at an international border.

Although police need probable cause - specific evidence of criminal activity - to search someone on the street, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that no such evidence is necessary for a border search. Courts have also ruled that an international airport is the equivalent of a border.

Border agents would need grounds for suspicion before conducting a body search, but a “piece of property simply does not implicate the same dignity and privacy concerns as highly intrusive searches of the person,” the court said. Judge Diarmuid O’Scannlain wrote the 3-0 decision.

Hopefully, when this makes it to the Supreme Court (and I’m sure it ultimately will), they’ll make the right decisions with regards to privacy.

It’s reasonable to ask someone to turn on their laptop to ensure that it’s not a bomb, but what reason could someone possibly have for looking at files stored on the computer without some sort of probable cause?

To me, despite the Ninth Circuit’s decision (which is surprising, since the Ninth Circuit is usually one of the more “liberal” Courts of Appeal), this smacks of a direct violation of a person’s Fourth Amendment rights.

For those that aren’t familiar, the Fourth Amendment states:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

In today’s age of electronics, I’d call a person’s laptop to effectively be “papers, and effects” … even if the defendant in this case is a pervert carrying child porn, the Customs officials should have never looked at the the files on the laptop without probable cause.

And nowhere, in any of the articles that I’ve found thus far, has there been any indication that this was the case. Instead, they’re claiming that “hey, we can open your luggage to make sure you’re not carrying drugs, so that means we can search all of your business and/or personal documents on your laptop at will as well.”

Talk about a slippery slope … once again I think that Blackstone’s Formulation should rule the day. As a reminder, Blackstone’s Formulation states, “it is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.”

I’m taking a few days off from work because, well, I just needed to take a few days off.

I was originally planning to go down to Fountain Hills, AZ (where my mom and stepdad live), to cheer on Kathy Sherwin, et al, at the NMBS race down there, but due to finances (and lack of planning, other than requesting the time off), this didn’t happen.

Now I’m just trying to relax and decompress. Unfortunately, like my normal work week, I’m still only getting 4-5 hours of sleep per night. I need to get out on the bike, and yet, I wasted a perfectly good riding day yesterday.

What’s worse than knowing what the solution to a problem is, and not being able to motivate yourself to do it? My life is so decidedly un-Big Ring these days, it’s unreal. Dysthymia in action (or is that dysthymia inaction?).

I did go to the Bike Porn showing at the warehouse last night; which was really quite interesting in the various ways that bicycle pornography can be interpreted; from the slightly erotic panning of sculpted lugs on a handcrafted steel frame, to the comedic idea of two bikes making love to each other, to a freak-bike builder lusting after high-end boutique racing bikes, to actual hardcore porn involving a bicycle … certain aspects of the latter were erotic and well-done; other aspects were just disturbing, at least to me.

You can view the trailer on Blip.TV … be forewarned, it is definitely not safe for work, or for people who don’t want to see nudity or anything remotely explicit.

Ran into the Wolfe, just after the screening and chatted far too briefly. Sometimes it’s interesting how easy it is to “talk” to people online, yet how difficult it can be face-to-face, when you’re not really sure what to say.

Shortly thereafter was an impromptu running of the Salt City Sprints with a number of exciting match-ups; in a few of the races, in keeping with the theme of the evening, a number of people (men and women alike) stripped down to skivvies, or less in a few cases, to try and gain a competitive advantage over their rivals (or maybe just to give the audience a thrill) …

The most exciting match of the evening was the fully-clothed face-off between Legal Messenger, Inc. (LMI) owner/dispatcher Jason Copier, and LMI messenger Patrick Beecroft which finished in a dead heat at 13.74 seconds. The battle for sprint supremacy between messenger and dispatcher was not settled last night.

The evening broke up about midnight, with many heading off to the Gallivan Center for a Midnight Mass, while I drove home (because, as you know, I drive to bike events rather than actually riding), and sat on the couch for another 3 hours watching stupid late-night television (I don’t even remember what was on) before finally wandering off to bed for a fitful 5-hours of sleep, waking up this morning at 8:30 to face another bleak, boring day … I’ve got to get out on the bike today, even if for only a short 10-miler, before the weather gets shitty.