The Fourth Circuit Says Border Agents Can Search Your Phone By Hand, No Suspicion Required

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that border agents can manually search your phone without a warrant or suspicion of wrongdoing. According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which filed an amicus brief, the court distinguished manual searches from forensic searches—allowing officers to conduct the former without justification, while requiring reasonable suspicion for the latter. The problem, as the EFF sees it: a border officer can scroll through your personal messages and photos without any reason, even though the privacy interests are identical. The ruling departs from a landmark twenty-fourteen Supreme Court decision, Riley versus California, which recognized that phones contain extraordinarily sensitive personal information. The EFF says it will keep fighting for stronger privacy protections at the border.

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