from a long trip and having a customs agent demand your mobile phone password so he or she can inspect its contents. The ACLU filed a formal complaint this week with CBP and Homeland Security officials, challenging the agencies’ right to examine phone data without a warrant.
at San Francisco International from an exhibition in Europe, and was pulled aside by CBP officers and ordered to unlock his i Phone for a search of its contents.
(The Fourth Amendment protects citizens against unlawful searches and seizures.) “…Any such search should be based on a warrant or, at a minimum, probable cause, and be limited in scope to that information relevant to the agency’s legitimate purpose in conducting the search. Gach’s phone illustrates, CBP’s policies do not in fact include the requirements necessary to guarantee the constitutionality of a device search.” The organization noted that the Supreme Court has already held that “a search of an electronic device constitutes a significant intrusion on an individual’s Fourth Amendment privacy interest, and held that searching an electronic device required a warrant even when the search was conducted incident to a lawful arrest.
The Oklahoma Department of Public Safety has purchased several devices capable of seizing funds loaded on to prepaid debit cards to aid troopers in roadside seizures of suspected drug-trafficking proceeds.
The portable card scanners are designed to be carried in law enforcement vehicles, allow troopers to freeze and seize money loaded onto a prepaid card, and to return money to an account whose funds were seized or frozen.