Samia Hossain of the ACLU writes:
The vast majority of people who travel internationally today carry electronic devices with them, such as cell phones, laptops, tablets, and e-readers. As a result, we can cross in and out of the United States holding large amounts of information in a way that was not possible before.
But advances in technology have also made it possible for the government to conduct searches of our private data at the border in unprecedented and alarming ways. Yesterday, we filed a brief at the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals urging the court to require the government to get a probable cause warrant before searching travelers’ electronic devices. As we argue in our brief, courts cannot just apply old rules written at a time when such invasive possibilities were never contemplated.
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