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.”

Ostensibly, this is supposed to be a cycling and/or skiing related blog … but over the years it has certainly developed into so much more … and for those of you who continue to come back and read my scribbles, I am grateful for your indulgence.

It’s 9 months until the actual 60th anniversary of the adoption of the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but as we in the United States approach our upcoming Presidential election, maybe it’s time to re-examine this document … and then count how many of the enumerated rights we as Americans actually have?

Are they truly rights, or are they, as George Carlin pointed out on his recent HBO special, merely temporary human privileges, which can be granted, and yet also revoked by a government?

In case you really have problems, think about World War II, during which about 120,000 people of Japanese descent, of which about 72,0000 were American citizens, were forcefully relocated from cities along the West Coast and placed into remote desert internment camps.

Okay, so that was 1942, before the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was ratified by the members of the United Nations … so how’s this for a few examples?

Article 5.

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Shall we discuss waterboarding?

Article 9.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.

How about Gitmo?

And here’s one of my favorites:

Article 12.

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

And yet, the current administration has continually curtailed citizens’ rights to privacy, resorting to warrantless domestic wiretaps.

An aphorism, often attributed to Benjamin Franklin states: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

Think about it. What do you want your future to look like?

THE SNOW STORM

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o’er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farmhouse at the garden’s end.
The sled and traveler stopped, the courier’s feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed
In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

Come see the north wind’s masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves his white bastions with projected roof
Round every wayward stake, or tree, or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly,
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn;
Fills up the farmer’s lane from wall to wall,
Maugre the farmer sighs; and, at the gate,
A tapering turret overtops the work.
And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not,
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind’s night-work,
The frolic architecture of snow.

  — Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882), American author, poet, and philosopher.