Cybernews: “Border control can check your phone without legal justification, and digital rights groups aren’t happy about it. If you’re entering the US, border control agents can manually search your phone without a warrant or individualized suspicion. In short, if someone is acting suspiciously or the officer just doesn’t like the look of a person, they can manually scroll through a traveler’s phone without much reason. This is because manual searches are considered “routine,” meaning the process is as invasive as looking through luggage or inspecting a vehicle… Essentially, EFF believes that regardless of whether the search “is conducted by an agent’s thumbs or by software, the end result is equally as invasive.” So, all device searches should be treated the same and should fall under the warrant requirement, “or at least the same Fourth Amendment standard.” Border agents should be forced to legally justify invasive device searches before checking a person’s device. However, the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit rejected this argument, saying that a “low standard applied to manual searches…simply because the border officer chooses to search by hand rather than with a forensic tool,” according to EFF. This is because routine searches are covered under the Fourth Amendment as a “border search exception” based on various factors, including “diminished expectation of privacy at the border,” according to St John’s University of Law…”

@alicia0001.bsky.social – “Fourth Circuit in Virginia has 3 Trump appointees: Julius Richardson, South Carolina A. Marvin Quattlebaum Jr, South Carolina Allison Jones Rushing, North Carolina Richardson & Quattlebaum have ties to the Federalist Society & to Leonard Leo. Just saying, he & McConnell helped stack the courts.”