Last week, local Congressman Ted W. Lieu, D-Torrance, along with fellow Democratic Reps. Eleanor Holmes Norton of Washington, D.C., Donald Beyer of Virginia and Adriano Espaillat of New York reintroduced the Protecting Data at the Border Act.
We applaud their efforts.
The legislation, which has been repeatedly brought forward in recent years, would reiterate Fourth Amendment protections for American citizens at ports of entry. Specifically, the legislation would require Customs and Border Patrol agents to get a warrant if they want to search through the electronic devices, including phones, of American citizens.
One might think constitutional rights apply at the border, but as the American Civil Liberties Union notes, “The government claims the authority to search all electronic devices at the border, no matter your legal status in the country or whether they have any reason to suspect that you’ve committed a crime.”
Refusal to comply could mean being delayed entry to the country and having your devices seized indefinitely.
Though the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the 2014 case Riley v. California that police generally must obtain a warrant before searching cell phones, lower courts have split on how this applies to border agents. Courts have ruled that either warrants aren’t required at all or that reasonable suspicion is at least required.
This chasm is untenable.
Absent a Supreme Court ruling making this clear, Rep. Lieu and his colleagues are right to push for an affirmative answer from Congress.
“The Founders could never imagine the information that a cellphone holds, but they had enough sense to safeguard us from unreasonable and invasive searches,” said Rep. Lieu in a statement announcing the legislation. “Our bill serves to make clear that the government does not possess the right to indiscriminately search phones and laptops of Americans without due process and adequate cause.”
It is unfortunate that here, in the land of the free, this is still up in the air.
We all recognize the importance of security. However, we have rights and the ability of government to act upon the rights of the people must always be checked against those rights. The freedom of Americans shouldn’t vanish simply because a border agent thinks they might be able to find something on their cell phone or computers.
