The Fourth Circuit Says Border Agents Can Search Your Phone By Hand, No Suspicion Required
Legal intern Suzanne Castillo was the principal author of this post. The Fourth Circuit issued a disappointing opinion in U.S. v. Belmonte Cardozo , a case in which EFF filed an amicus brief , alongside the national ACLU, its Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia affiliates, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL). We argued that electronic device…
In a recent decision, the Fourth Circuit ruled that border agents are allowed to search travelers' phones without suspicion, simply based on the choice of the officer to conduct a manual search rather than using forensic software. This decision was reached in the case of U.S. v. Belmonte Cardozo, which the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) had argued against as an amicus brief alongside several other organizations.
The court determined that a lower standard applies to manual searches, allowing the government to conduct invasive electronic device searches without any reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing. The Fourth Amendment typically requires a warrant based on probable cause for government searches, but the border search exception permits warrantless searches of persons or property entering the U.S. The privacy interests in the data stored on a phone or laptop are significantly greater than those in the contents of luggage, and the Supreme Court had previously recognized this in its Riley v.
California decision. However, the Fourth Circuit disagreed with this reasoning in the Belmonte Cardozo case, stating that manual searches are "routine" and thus reasonable under the Fourth Amendment without any suspicion.
Written by urgent.news from EFF Deeplinks's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
