U.S. Border Agents Can’t Randomly Search Phones, Judge Rules

(Bloomberg) -- A federal judge rejected a Trump administration policy allowing agents at U.S. border crossings and airports to arbitrarily search the smartphones and laptops of international travelers.

The long-standing exception to U.S. law that allows agents to search travelers’ belongings without a warrant “is not limitless and must still be reasonable,” U.S. District Judge Denise J. Casper ruled Tuesday in Boston.

While the government’s need to prevent terrorism and stop criminals from entering the U.S. gives it significant leeway, agents must demonstrate individualized suspicion that a traveler’s devices contain digital contraband before conducting searches that let them tap troves of personal data such as legal documents and social-media posts, the judge said.

Casper quoted an earlier ruling in which a judge wrote that comparing searches of phones or laptops to those of a suitcases or purses “is like saying a ride on horseback is materially indistinguishable from a flight to the moon.”

“Both are ways of getting from point A to point B, but little else justifies lumping them together,” Casper quotes the ruling as saying.

The press office for U.S. Customs and Border Protection didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment on the ruling.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Frontier Foundation called Tuesday’s ruling a victory for privacy rights, noting Customs and Border Protection searched more than 33,000 devices last year, almost four times the number from three years earlier.

Among those who sued was a military veteran, a journalist and a NASA engineer, as well as a Muslim woman who objected to male border agents viewing photographs on her phone in which she and her daughter weren’t wearing headscarves. Some were searched multiple times, and at least one had a phone taken violently by agents at the U.S.-Canada border.

“By putting an end to the government’s ability to conduct suspicionless fishing expeditions, the court reaffirms that the border is not a lawless place and that we don’t lose our privacy rights when we travel,” Esha Bhandari, an attorney with the ACLU, said in a statement.

Read More: Trump Administration Sued Over Phone Searches at U.S. Border

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