A Fight to Restore the Constitution at Customs Checkpoints
When a U.S. citizen returns home from abroad, the federal government asserts a hugely intrusive prerogative: the option to search not only their person and luggage, but the entire contents of their mobile phone, tablet, or laptop––sans a warrant, probable cause, or reasonable suspicion––as if the Fourth Amendment is null at the border.
Two U.S. Senators, Republican Rand Paul and Democrat Ron Wyden, are outraged by those intrusions, and hope to end them with a new bill they’ve put forward. In the House, Blake Farenthold of Texas and Jared Polis of Colorado are their analogs.
The strangeness of the status quo is easiest to understand if one first reflects on what the Fourth Amendment demands of cell phone searches conducted anywhere but a point of entry. Chief Justice John Roberts published the controlling opinion on that matter after hearing at the Supreme Court. Riley was stopped for driving with expired tags in the state of California. A police officer quickly learned that he was
