Feds try to forcefully search Wall Street Journal reporter's phone

Parent Cafe
1

http://money.cnn.com/2016/07/21/media/wall-street-journal-reporter-phone-feds/index.html

2

WOW!

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Just thought I would point out that this incident took place in June, 2016.

(Just in case anyone is tempted to draw any sort of politically-based inferences).

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I am shocked, honestly.

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Law enforced during the Obama administration. Don’t add to unnecessary hysteria.

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This post is not political. It took place last summer, but I’d never heard of this phone search law–for US citizens! Without any reason!–before and am very troubled by it.

7

It also happened to a NASA scientist recently. The post is in the “Global Entry” thread.

The difference between them and now is that they told him that if he didn’t unlock his phone he would be detained indefinitely.

8

Customs has had this type of border search authority forever. In the past, they used to search passengers’ briefcases and luggage for documents that might reveal some type of illegal activity. If people had something to hide, they just didn’t bring it through Customs. Nowadays, everything is on phones and laptops. According to the law, searches of electronic materials are perfectly legal, although this may be changed in the future. And it doesn’t matter whether one is a US citizen or not.

Here’s a good explanation from Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception

9

Good to know. I could see myself (before reading this thread) raising a huge stink if customs demanded to search through my phone and computer. Seems like you have no choice.

10

So that bothers people? That ain’t nothing. Try this one:

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2017/02/13/libertarians-split-with-trump-over-controversial-police-tactic.html

Last president enthusiastically supported “civil asset forfeiture”, a controversial law enforcement tool that allows an individual’s property or assets to be seized without a guilty verdict, which mostly affected the poor, who cannot afford to hire a lawyer. This president seems to like it even more. These guys really seem to like their authoritarian governments, to steal from people for profit.

11

My NJ born blonde haired wife got detained, threatened and questioned for 4 hours coming back from Canada. Just because they can. She did get an apology about a week later.

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So much for retiring in Bellingham. I am not holding my breath about what the SCOTUS said about the 100 mile clause (from the wiki read).

13

I started a thread on civil asset forfeiture before, which didn’t raise much interest. Bizarre to me. I wonder if any other country has any similar legalized theft by police. In many countries the police may take your stuff, but both sides know that they are just stealing it.

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/1790772-civil-forfeiture-now-requires-a-criminal-conviction-in-montana-and-new-mexico.html#latest

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I remember first hearing of it during the Reagan years, as a tool that law enforcement could use against big cocaine dealers. I had assumed the person would have to be convicted! Didn’t it quickly devolve into kicking tenants out of public housing because some child or guest left a trace of marijuana behind?

15

This procedure has been in place for some time. It was a concern with employees where I work - CBP requiring a log in to laptops and therefore their ability to read anything/everything on it, including company proprietary data.

16

http://www.theverge.com/2017/2/12/14583124/nasa-sidd-bikkannavar-detained-cbp-phone-search-trump-travel-ban is a recent story on a similar subject.

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^^^^ do you have another perhaps more legit source for the nasa scientist story? sounds “off”
maybe snopes (just a little sarcasm)

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Why does it sound “off”?

Most stories on the subject so far seem to point to either The Verge story linked in #15 or the CNN story at http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/13/us/citizen-nasa-engineer-detained-at-border-trnd/ . If you want, you can wait to see if there are any updates from these and other news media.

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com rates The Verge and CNN as left-center with high factual reporting.

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I don’t see why the NASA guy made news, even ignoring border exceptions have existed forever. If the government issues you a phone, the government maintains the right to repossess the phone at anytime for any reason and owns the data on the phone.

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Stuff belonging to one part of the government is not necessarily supposed to be visible to some other part of the government.