Samuel Tunick, who faces a felony charge for deleting his phone’s data during an airport customs search, called the government’s peering into people’s private lives “creepy.”
It’s legal within most of the US for customs/border enforcement to do warrantless phone searches, because their definition of border is 100 miles from point of entry to the country. So every coastline, every international airport, etc.
I’ve heard that is a misunderstanding. It’s 100 miles from a national border or at a point of entry, not 100 miles from any point of entry. It still covers like 50% of the population though.
Maybe so. But probably guessing targeting someone for a warrantless search would not be legal. That is to say, the cops can’t follow a guy and wait until they’re 100 miles from the border to pull them over and call over customs to search them. What may save Turnick is he was already being investigated and this search was clearly an endrun around needing a warrant.
It’s legal within most of the US for customs/border enforcement to do warrantless phone searches, because their definition of border is 100 miles from point of entry to the country. So every coastline, every international airport, etc.
I’ve heard that is a misunderstanding. It’s 100 miles from a national border or at a point of entry, not 100 miles from any point of entry. It still covers like 50% of the population though.
Maybe so. But probably guessing targeting someone for a warrantless search would not be legal. That is to say, the cops can’t follow a guy and wait until they’re 100 miles from the border to pull them over and call over customs to search them. What may save Turnick is he was already being investigated and this search was clearly an endrun around needing a warrant.
My understanding is that it’s “only” 100 miles from the coast/border, which turns out to be most major population centers.
It was an international return flight, 100% border jurisdiction.