Your privacy doesn’t matter at the U.S. border; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 8/29/16

Noah Feldman, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; Your privacy doesn’t matter at the U.S. border:

"The lesson from all this isn’t just that you approach a border at your own risk. It’s that major exceptions to our basic liberties should be interpreted narrowly, not broadly. Searching a reporter’s phone or anyone’s data isn’t within the government’s plausible set of purposes.

There are two ways to fix the problem. One is for Congress to pass a law that prohibits such border searches, as was proposed unsuccessfully in 2008 and 2009.

If Congress won’t act, though, it’s up to the Supreme Court to repair the damage it did in 1886 and 1977. It doesn’t need to overturn its precedent, just narrow it to cover the circumstances that Congress actually had in mind in 1789, namely border searches for goods being shipped illegally or without duty. That doesn’t include data. It would be a big improvement in constitutional doctrine — and civil liberties."