Russ Feingold calls for a stop of laptop searches
Categories: Security, newworldorder, Privacy, 4th amendment
The Progressive has printed his speech to the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Rights.
An excerpt follows:
But it is happening. Over the last two years, reports have surfaced that customs agents have been asking U.S. citizens to turn over their cell phones or give them the passwords to their laptops. The travelers have been given a choice between complying with the request or being kept out of their own country. They have been forced to wait for hours while customs agents reviewed and sometimes copied the contents of the electronic devices. In some cases, the laptops or cell phones were confiscated, and returned weeks or even months later, with no explanation.
“Now, the government has an undeniable right and responsibility to protect the security of our borders. The Supreme Court has thus held that no warrant and no suspicion is necessary to conduct, quote, ‘routine searches’ at the border. But there is a limit to this so-called ‘border search exception.’ The courts have unanimously held that invasive searches of the person, such as strip searches or x-rays, are ‘non-routine’ and require reasonable suspicion. As the Supreme Court has stated, these searches implicate “dignity and privacy interests” that are not present in routine searches of objects.
“So the constitutional question we face today is this: When the government looks through the contents of your laptop, is that just like looking through the contents of a suitcase, car trunk, or purse? Or does it raise dignity and privacy interests that are more akin to an invasive search of the person, such that some individualized suspicion should be required before the search is conducted?
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