Haha!

i think the show Locked Up Abroad should do a show or twenty about people coming into the US and getting fucked over for no apparent reason.

Anecdotal observation: I live in Singapore, which is supposedly a dictatorship and police state, and I have never once even heard of local customs searching anyone's laptop, iPod, or thumb drive. Make of that what you will.

Does the Fourth Amendment grant U.S. Citizens the "right" to fly on airplanes? Is such a search "unreasonable?"

It doesn't give U.S. citizens the "right" to sit on their front porch, either, but should anyone who sits on their front porch expect a government agency to search them without probable cause and/or confiscate their property?

Actually, I would argue that the Fourth Amendment does grant a U.S. Citizen the right to sit on his front porch. This is because I understand that according to Fourth Amendment jurisprudence it is alot more difficult for the State or Federal government to come on to your property and/or search your home without a warrant (granted by a "neutral and detached magistrate" who has found probable cause), exigent circumstances, or other exception. In fact it is right there in the Amendment: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures . . . ."

Think of it this way: in order for you to take advantage of the privilege of flying, you are submitting to a lesser degree of Fourth Amendment protection. You don't like it? Don't fly.

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures . . . ."

I'd say that laptops and other electronic devices count as "papers and effects."

We're not even talking about getting on an airplane, were talking about what happens after you land.

This also has nothing to to with flying. The same thing happens weather you take a boat, train, car or just walk across the border. So, you'd be better off saying, "You don't like America, don't come here", except they are doing this to American citizens as well as foreigners.

So what's you answer now, mister "please take the Constitution and wipe you ass with it?"

You are correct in that I jumped the gun on the flying thing. I have no problem owning up to the fact that I skimmed the article. Force of habit.

But the principle is the same: you want back in the country, you're gonna have to submit to different standards than you would just walking down the street or "sitting on your porch." It's not like the idea of border searches came out of nowhere:

"The Government's interest in preventing the entry of unwanted persons and effects is at its zenith at the international border. Time and again, we have stated that searches made at the border ... are reasonable simply by virtue of the fact that they occur at the border."

"Flores-Montano, 124 S.Ct. at 1585 (holding that the government's authority to conduct border searches is broad enough to permit the removal, disassembly, and reassembly of a vehicle's fuel tank)."

"The border search doctrine is not a recent development in the law. The "longstanding recognition that searches at our borders without probable cause and without a warrant are nonetheless `reasonable' has a history as old as the Fourth Amendment itself." United States v. Ramsey, 431 U.S. 606, 619, 97 S.Ct. 1972, 52 L.Ed.2d 617 (1977). In fact, the same Congress which proposed the Fourth Amendment to state legislatures also enacted the first far-reaching customs statute in 1790. Id. at 616, 97 S.Ct. 1972. Thus, since the birth of our country, customs officials have wielded broad authority to search the belongings of would-be entrants without obtaining a warrant and without establishing probable cause. Id.See also Montoya de Hernandez, 473 U.S. at 538, 105 S.Ct. 3304; United States v. Villamonte-Marquez, 462 U.S. 579, 584-85, 103 S.Ct. 2573, 77 L.Ed.2d 22 (1983)."

"This well-recognized exception to the safeguards of the Fourth Amendment comes with an equally well-established rationale. For it is "axiomatic that the United States, as sovereign, has the inherent authority to protect, and a paramount interest in protecting, its territorial integrity." Flores-Montano, 124 S.Ct. at 1586. The government has an overriding interest in securing the safety of its citizens and to do this it must seek to prevent "the introduction of contraband into this country." Montoya de Hernandez, 473 U.S. at 537, 105 S.Ct. 3304."

"A greater interest on the side of the government at the border is coupled with a lesser interest on the side of the potential entrant. Since "a port of entry is not a traveler's home," his expectation of privacy there is substantially lessened. United States v. Thirty-Seven Photographs, 402 U.S. 363, 376, 91 S.Ct. 1400, 28 L.Ed.2d 822 (1971)(plurality opinion). When someone approaches a border, he should not be surprised that "[c]ustoms officers characteristically inspect luggage...; it is an old practice and is intimately associated with excluding illegal articles from the country." Id."

United States v. Ickes, 393 F.3d 501 (4th Cir. 2005).

I didn't take a look at United States v. Arnold, (9th Cir. April 21, 2008), the Ninth Circuit case that is mentioned in the article. Mostly because I share the opinion that the 9th Cir. is full of nutters.

Great. I'll look forward to giving a shit when you get appointed to the federal bench.

My my, aren't you testy.

Do you have an actual response, or is "I don't give a shit" all you've got?

That is my actual response. Your opinion means nothing in this context. Show me a case in which a federal court has held that "laptops and other electronic devices count as 'papers and effects'" in the context of the Fourth Amendment, and I will, again, point to the border search doctrine mentioned above.

I don't like Sundays.

You're the legal professional, not me. Feel free to show me a case in which a federal court ruled that they don't count as 'papers and effects.'

Actually, don't bother, because in light of your further posts I think that's a moot point. You're right to say that my opinion means nothing in the context of the border search doctrine you've pointed to, but that wasn't what I was trying to argue against in the first place, because you didn't even raise that issue until after my first two replies. My posts were in response to what I took to be your blanket assertion that since flying is a 'privilege' and not a Constitutionally protected right, the Fourth Amendment need not apply to air travellers. But if that isn't what you were trying to say - and it now appears that it was not - then I don't think we have very much left to disagree about.

I have to say I come to that very same conclusion a lot, people can't blame you for not doing your job, or over doing it, if they don't really know what it is that you do!
Kinda like the guy at the office that never does anything, how can you fault him, he's done nothing wrong? Yeah that's government.

Flying is a privilege and not a right protected by the U.S. Constitution. You give up some, if not most, of your rights under the Fourth Amendment when you invoke that privilege the same way you give up some, but fewer, rights when you drive a car. The key question in deciding whether a search is reasonable, is whether said search contravenes what our society concludes is an individual's "reasonable expectation of privacy." We have a "high" expectation of privacy regarding our homes. Thus, it is kinda hard for the government to get in there: it requires a warrant or facts to which one of the Fourth Amendment's "narrowly tailored exceptions" apply. This expectation of privacy diminishes when we take advantage of a privilege like driving a car or flying on a plane. These activities are already highly regulated by the government and the stakes are a bit higher than they are on your porch.

By the way, this whole discussion assumes that the entity doing the searching before you fly is a government agency. Private companies can search whatever the hell they want as a condition of doing business with them.

Hell, as a US citizen, coming back from Germany was much, much easier and less of a hassle the one time my connecting flight was in Amsterdam instead of a US city. I've missed flights (and had luggage lost in the shuffle, the only time that's ever happened to me) because of how stupidly inefficient and badly organized INS is. (Customs has typically been much less of an issue. I've never had anything to declare nor has anybody ever wanted to search anything I had. Slow lines sometimes, though.)

I have never had a good experience with post-international travel processing in the US. not once.