this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2026
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It probably won't work, at least (US)domestically. The requirement for obtaining a warrant before searching a phone is part of training because there is a clear Supreme Court ruling to that effect.
That being said, what the law says and what some random asshole does during a stop are not always the same thing.
Their way around it is they say that the border crossing technically isn't 100% normal US territory and therefore some constitutional rights are suspended under the concept of "sovereign self-protection". You could then say any law in the US could be used to justify this concept, in fact it was used to forcibly intern thousands of Japanese and Japanese-Americans during ww2.
He was targeted for purely political reasons, the cop-city environmental protest in Atlanta GA, and I'm wondering why the border officials were even aware of them. Is there some sort of "we don't like what you think" list run by the gov?
His device was threatened with seizure even though he posed no threat, no visible threat or spoken one, no suspicion of a crime, and they had no idea what the contents were. His 5th Amendment rights were violated by the threat to seize it. They want to establish a precedent, that the very existence of a possibility of criminal contents, regardless of any reason to suspect any, is sufficient for search and seizure. Based on this a little kid deleting the contents of their ipad would be a crime.
In addition, how can you show intent to destroy evidence when you have no expectation of being detained or charged on any specific occasion, and have no idea what evidence they might be seeking?
i've been on it, yes.
You think all these data centers are just for making bad code and creepy videos?
They're massive AI-powered false-positive factories.
This was a point of entry. No search warrant required.
They will 100% tell you they don't need a warrant if it's during any kind of traffic stop or border crossing.
Feds following the law? Did you miss the last decade?