{"id":2273,"date":"2009-12-22T10:58:35","date_gmt":"2008-07-19T07:55:34","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"-0001-11-30T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-07-19T07:55:34","slug":"en-US","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/?p=2273","title":{"rendered":"CA2d: Border search of laptop without suspicion was valid"},"content":{"rendered":"

Search of a laptop at Customs at LAX for child pornography on return from Thailand was valid. (Thailand is a source country for child porn.) No reasonable suspicion is required for a laptop search at the border. The later search of the computer was a lawful extension of the border search. People v. Endacott<\/a>, 164 Cal. App. 4th 1346, 79 Cal. Rptr. 3d 907 (2d Dist. 2008):<\/p>\n

Indeed, the human race has not yet, at least, become so robotic that opening a computer is similar to a strip search or body cavity search. Of course viewing confidential computer files implicates dignity and privacy interests. But no more so than opening a locked brief case, which may contain writings describing the owner’s intimate thoughts or photographs depicting child pornography. A computer is entitled to no more protection than any other container. The suspicionless border search of Endacott’s computer was valid.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Comment:<\/em> This is apparently the first state court to follow the Ninth Circuit which has held suspicionless laptop border searches valid since 2005. This was a no-brainer for Customs to let this case go to the state courts since California courts are bound to follow the Fourth Amendment and has no broader state<\/em> constitutional law. Actually, there is no risk at all to Customs. If any state court should determine that their state constitution grants broader rights, the federal government would just take the prosecution over and indict the defendant federally. So, the defendant gains nothing except the possibility of a federal sentence. Therefore, defense counsel must do a cost-benefit analysis of probable sentence to decide what approach to take.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

b2evALnk.b2WPAutP Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"pingsdone","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2273\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fourthamendment.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}