Appellate Law

More on laptop border searches

By S. COTUS

The Ninth Circuit Blog shows all the problems in United States v. Arnold __ F.3d __, 2008 WL 1776525 (9th Cir. April 21, 2008), which we covered here.  In short, this holds that not even reasonable suspicion is required for a border laptop search.

Here are the problems in it:

• The images that lead to the search were simply legal images of nudity.
• The Ninth, by O?Scannlain, analyzes the First Amendment issues just by parroting the Fourth Circuit.  Now, I guess most of us already were thinking that O?Scannlain doesn?t take the First Amendment too seriously, but did he really need to rub it in our faces by not even pretending to do any analysis of this, and just ?parroting? the Fourth.
• An Assistant United States Attorney Admitted that ?she had Customs troll for single men coming back from Asia with laptops at SFO ? these passengers earn an automatic referral to Secondary and an order to boot-up ?
• This doesn?t resolve the ?password? problem, of whether an individual can be compelled to reveal a password.

Full post as published by Appellate Law and Practice on April 29, 2008 (boomark / email).