I often hear about such things, I'm curious, has anyone here on HN experienced such a thing (or know of someone who did)? At borders I might imagine wanting to check your devices if you're coming back from say some place in central Asia, but how common are random police seizures? (I'm not from the US)
In today’s climate of protests this is something everyone needs to know. Police will detain and drop charges the next day simply to clear the area, and in the meantime they can seize your devices and look through them.
In the US, border patrol has a 100 mile jurisdiction from any border. Practically this means they can seize your devices with no pretext at all, and 5th amendment protections do not apply here.
That means anyone in San Diego, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, etc can have their devices imaged and confiscated for any reason at all.
I don’t know of anyone who has had this happen but given everything going on in the world right now I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if next year we start seeing it happen everywhere
I recall seeing arguments that any airport that has international flights is effectively an "international border" too for some purposes, though I'm not sure where.
Yeah “100 miles from a border” includes the majority of people living in the west coast states. Millions of people can have their rights waived by a border patrol agent in their own homes
Twenty years ago talk like this would be whacko conspiracy talk but 2015 onwards I have seen far too many wild things happen in government that we never thought would happen…
