(Incredible line of B/S) DHS claims: Border device search policy does not violate 4th. Amendment.
The Department of Homeland Security’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties (CLCR) has determined that the DHS’s warrantless, and often suspicion-less, search and seizure of electronics devices at U.S. borders does not violate the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable search or seizure.
The CLCR argues [pdf] that the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have, for a long time, possessed the authority to conduct “suspicionless and warrantless searches of merchandise at the border and its functional equivalent.” This authority, they claim, extends to electronics devices as well as other merchandise. In other words, seizing and searching a laptop at an airport customs checkpoint is no different than rifling through someone’s trunk at any land-based port of entry. The courts, the executive summary states, “have not treated [border] searches of electronic devices any differently than searches of other object.”
“We conclude that CBP’s and ICE’s current border search policies comply with the Fourth Amendment,” the summary reads. “We also conclude that imposing a requirement that officers have reasonable suspicion in order to conduct a border search of an electronic device would be operationally harmful without concomitant civil rights/civil liberties benefits.”
The summary goes onto say, without any explanation, that “laptop border searches… do not violate travelers’ First Amendment rights” and that current policies that ensure “reasonable efforts at promptness” make the implementation time limits governing the return of seized good unnecessary.
http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/dhs-border-search-policy-does-not-violate-fourth-021113