Erik Uebelacker reports:
A Fourth Amendment carveout that gives U.S. Border Patrol agents the right to conduct warrantless searches shouldn’t apply to cellphones and laptops, the American Civil Liberties Union argued to a Second Circuit panel on Monday.
The “border search exception” allows federal officers to search people and items entering the United States, without reasonable suspicion or probable cause. But the ACLU says digital device searches don’t count because they “can reveal the mine run of somebody’s life.”
“It’s like searching someone’s home,” ACLU lawyer Esha Bhandari told the court. “It’s like searching the entire contents of someone’s mind.”
Read more at Courthouse News.