Skip to main content

Court rules U.S. border agents need warrants to search electronic devices

By
Evening Shot of Border Wall Between El Paso Texas USA and Juárez Chihuahua Texas at Puerto Anapra with US Border Patrol Vehicle in the Distance

Do U.S. border agents have free rein to search travelers' electronic devices, such as phones, tables, and laptops, without a warrant? According to court filings, that's what they were doing. But there might be an end to that "broad, unconstitutional authority," as the American Civil Liberties Union has called it.

A federal district court in New York sided with civil liberties groups to rule that U.S. border agents must obtain a warrant before searching those devices.

"As the court recognizes, warrantless searches of electronic devices at the border are an unjustified intrusion into travelers’ private expressions, personal associations, and journalistic endeavors — activities the First and Fourth Amendments were designed to protect," Scott Wilkens, senior counsel at the Knight First Amendment Institute, said in a press release. "The ruling makes clear that border agents need a warrant before they can access what the Supreme Court has called a 'window onto a person’s life.'"

SEE ALSO: U.S. court dismisses most claims against OpenAI in copyright class action

The ruling comes as part of a case in which a U.S. citizen, Kurbonali Sultanov, was flagged at New York's JFK International Airport for being "a possible purchaser or possessor of child sexual abuse material." Authorities allegedly found four videos on his phone after border agents said he had to give them his phone's password — without a warrant. He argued that the search violated his Fourth Amendment rights. 

The court found that "the searches of Sultanov’s phone violated the Fourth Amendment, which requires cell phone searches at the border to be supported by a warrant and probable cause; however, the Court denies suppression of the evidence because the government acted based on "the good faith exception to the exclusionary rule."



from Mashable https://ift.tt/o6p1tGx
via IFTTT
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Nintendo Switch has been the US’s bestselling console for 23 straight months

By
Photo by James Bareham / The Verge It’s been a good two years for the Nintendo Switch. According to Nintendo, the gaming tablet has been the bestselling console in the US for 23 straight months. And according to data from the NPD Group, it just had its best October ever, moving 735,926 units of both the Switch and Switch Lite in the US. The company says that represents a 136 percent increase compared to last year. To date, the Switch has sold 22.5 million units in the US, and last week Nintendo revealed that more than 68 million units have been sold globally . “We’re excited about our momentum,” says Nick Chavez, Nintendo of America’s SVP of sales and marketing. Chavez puts the company’s big October down to two main factors. One is a better supply of stock; this year in particular, it’s often been hard to find a Switch on store shelves. This has only been exacerbated by increased demand due to a combination of the pandemic and the breakout success of Animal Crossing: New Horizons . ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Instagram accidentally reinstated Pornhub’s banned account

By
After years of on-and-off temporary suspensions, Instagram permanently banned Pornhub’s account in September. Then, for a short period of time this weekend, the account was reinstated. By Tuesday, it was permanently banned again. “This was done in error,” an Instagram spokesperson told TechCrunch. “As we’ve said previously, we permanently disabled this Instagram account for repeatedly violating our policies.” Instagram’s content guidelines prohibit  nudity and sexual solicitation . A Pornhub spokesperson told TechCrunch, though, that they believe the adult streaming platform’s account did not violate any guidelines. Instagram has not commented on the exact reasoning for the ban, or which policies the account violated. It’s worrying from a moderation perspective if a permanently banned Instagram account can accidentally get switched back on. Pornhub told TechCrunch that its account even received a notice from Instagram, stating that its ban had been a mistake (that message itse...
Post a Comment
Read more

MVP versus EVP: Is it time to introduce ethics into the agile startup model?

By
Anand Rao Contributor Share on Twitter Anand Rao is global head of AI at PwC . The rocket ship trajectory of a startup is well known: Get an idea, build a team and slap together a minimum viable product (MVP) that you can get in front of users. However, today’s startups need to reconsider the MVP model as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) become ubiquitous in tech products and the market grows increasingly conscious of the ethical implications of AI augmenting or replacing humans in the decision-making process. An MVP allows you to collect critical feedback from your target market that then informs the minimum development required to launch a product — creating a powerful feedback loop that drives today’s customer-led business. This lean, agile model has been extremely successful over the past two decades — launching thousands of successful startups, some of which have grown into billion-dollar companies. However, building high-performing product...
Post a Comment
Read more