"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Amendment 5:
"..nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
But the bar for hauling someone to court and defacto punishing them financially and smearing them in the eyes of the public is so low. And the path to getting compensation for wrongful prosecution so fraught. What an easy tool the justice system is to punish uppity citizens thinking they don't have a king.
You think they'll see a courtroom? Ha! If they're lucky they'll get there in 5yr and $15k.
When the administrative enforcement bureaucracies want to harass you they'll hit you with some ruinously expensive civil fine BS. No court will give a crap about you until you've exhausted a bunch of appeals, which you of course appeal to the same agency that's trying to screw you. Only after years of that (and invariably legal fees, because you can't go it alone), do you sue them and get to see a real courtroom. But even then, this is a civil matter, not a criminal one, so all your rights have been nerf'd and there's a hundred years of precedent and case law that tilt things in their favor. If you get lucky, they'll settle and you'll only be out a few tens of thousands for the ordeal.
If you are a US citizen, they are not entitled to your unlocked phone. They need a judicial warrant if they want you to unlock your phone with a PIN/password. It is settled case law that that falls under your protections under the 14th Amendment.
They can take it for a "reasonable amount of time" (inconvenience you for a few hours and make you miss your connecting flight) while they copy an encrypted image. They then must return it to you.
I'm not sure this is 100% true. Courts have found that in order for the exception to the 4th amendment at borders to apply the search has to bear some relationship to the purpose of securing borders. For example
"to conduct such an intrusive and nonroutine search under the border search exception (that is, without a
warrant), the Government must have individualized suspicion of an offense that bears some nexus to the border search exception’s purposes of protecting national security, collecting duties, blocking the entry of unwanted persons, or disrupting efforts to export or import contraband. See also United States v. Ramsey, 431 U.S. 606, 620 (1977) (“The border-search exception is grounded in the recognized right of the sovereign to control, subject to substantive limitations imposed by the Constitution, who and what may enter the country.”). If a nonroutine search becomes too “attenuated” from these historic rationales, it “no longer [will] fall under” the exception"
Of course whether border agents know or care about this is a different story and by the time you are quoting precedent, you're probably beyond any of this being helpful.
Evidence of what? Destroying evidence assumes he is guilty of a crime which there be evidence of. Our system is predicated on an assumption of innocence. The normal threshold to accuse is a "reasonable, articulable suspicion." This does not meet that criteria.
Well that's the thing with destroying evidence. If you destroyed it, it becomes harder (or impossible) to prove you did the crime. That's why it's not uncommon for people to be only charged with stuff like "obstruction of justice" rather than the actual crime they allegedly did.
In this case, the authorities are claiming they were looking for CSAM. So wiping the phone hindered a valid investigation.
They can say anything they want. They hold all the power. This will never change until enough people take matters into their own hands, as the system has been compromised.
And what if he was erasing a steamy affair with a border patrol agent? That's not illegal, but releasing knowledge of it could be damaging to all parties for no reason.
if the only evidence of a crime is on your phone, what kind of crime is it?
we should always be asking: is this the only way you can prove the accusation? just because it would make LEO life easier - that's not justification for violating the constitution.
an consider what this case teaches us: clean up your devices before you cross a border. how does that even help the goal of law enforcement?
Destroying evidence or items believed to be evidence is a crime in itself, regardless of whether or not the original "evidence" or lack thereof pertains to a crime.
It seems like the best course of action would be to argue he did not destroy evidence, just made it unavailable at the location to force the requirement for a search warrant. It would probably be a hard sell, but I can't think of a better argument (not a lawyer).
What's the longest a citizen (with all appopriate documentation on them) has been held by border patrol after refusing to answer any questions? A quick search failed to get me a solid answer to this, other than a general suggestion that 72 hours is probably the practical upper limit (but no statutory limit necessarily exists), and CBP policies say 12 hours.
I'm interested to know about specific examples. Aside from extraordinary cases where the gov't is pretty sure they're dealing with a bona fide terrorist, my expectation is that CBP mostly isn't really that interested in detaining people indefinitely just for the lulz. They're probably just going to say "okay, fine, we're taking the phone, here's your receipt for it, get lost" and let you go on your way.
They were pretty obviously hoping to find a specific crime to accuse him of (because he is a protester against the Atlanta "Cop City" thing).
But no respectable judge would ever have issued a search warrant on the basis of "we want to rifle through his messages/contacts so we can hopefully accuse him of something".
Protesters against this exact same thing were mis-prosecuted under "domestic terrorism" and "racketeering" charges before (got dismissed in 2025).
Problem is, he didn't destroy shit. "He" (by which I mean, technically the agents) deleted a header that's used to encrypt data but can restored from a backup.
This is why we have judges, I wonder if this has been ruled on already. If you filled out a notebook in a special cipher with the cipher stored separately beside it, then when a cop asked for the notebook you handed the cipher over and then burned the cipher right in front of them, is that destruction of evidence? Idk at the end of the day it does have the same result as destroying the data.
>"He" (by which I mean, technically the agents)
Under the same logic you could mail a bomb to anyone and say you didn't kill anyone, they did. It was just rigged to blow when they opened the box.
Sure, but the issue is he didn't delete his data, he deleted a header with a key in it, that's it, just a few MB. He didn't delete hundreds of GB of chats or browsing history, he deleted a key to access it and that key isn't necessarily the only one that can access it. All the stuff they want can still be accessed just fine if another copy of the key exists.
To put it in protective, just opening a web browser or some other app can delete/alter more data than was deleted in this case.
Kind of? Let's say he has a detached header on another device and deleted the one on his phone. It's not at all destroyed now. Is what he did still illegal?
This is important because this is a feature of some crypto systems like LUKS. You can have your header on another physically septate device. If this is ruled on in an insufficiently nuanced way it could have very significant implications for carrying encrypted data without the key.
I think I misunderstood your original scenario. This one makes a lot more sense. Although I wouldn't want to be in the position of being the test case.
> Image he took a blow-torch to a safe and the door welded shut
This analogue isn't perfect, but it isn't relevant anyway: the laws in question criminalize acts based on their intent.
The blowtorch wasn't intended to destroy the contents of the safe (a la deletion of a key), but even still: if the intent was to impede or delay the investigation by welding the safe shut, it would be equally criminal.
Is there any question the person who was baselessly charged with CSAM, then terrorism when they realized it was so obviously untenable, as a pretense to detain him would've been treated differently if he were on a different "side"?
>the person who was baselessly charged with CSAM, then terrorism
Source? Are we still talking about Samuel Tunick? The article doesn't mention it, and so far as I can tell he was only charged at the border crossing for obstruction.
Not "charged" as in indicted but the search was based on an accusation that he had CSAM on the device. But his political proclivities make it pretty transparent that CSAM was an invented excuse to investigate and punish a political dissident.
I'm just guessing here, but the most problematic word on the 4th amendment to attack from the government's perspective is "unreasonable". It's easy to see how a phone border search could be construed as reasonable, and (without digging into this deeply) I suspect that's where most of the push back on this will be.
I suspect the 5th amendment is probably more valuable to the defense here as the password is effectively testimonial and the give us your password or we'll ... is compelled speech.
Either way, it's gonna be many 10s of thousands of dollars in lawyers fees to fight this. Which sucks.
> It's easy to see how a phone border search could be construed as reasonable
I'm curious, is there any case law from the pre digital age regarding people forced to open their briefcase and let the border guard read all their documents at a port of entry?
There is no such exception allowed in the Constitution. And if a case is made that they're not legally in the US yet, then by the same logic, they should not be subject to all the same laws of the US yet.
The Supreme Court has long recognized a border-search exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement. In United States v. Flores-Montano, the Court looked to the nation’s sovereign “interest in protecting . . . its territorial integrity” to justify such searches.3 In United States v. Montoya de Hernandez, the Court stated, somewhat more narrowly, that Congress is the source of the executive’s power. It explained that “[s]ince the founding of our Republic . . . [Congress has] granted the Executive plenary authority to conduct routine searches and seizures at the border, without probable cause or a warrant.” The Commerce Clause permits Congress to authorize the seizure of goods at the border.
> While the Supreme Court has long recognized a border-search exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement, it applies to only two interests: promoting the duty regime and preventing contraband from entering the country; and ensuring that individuals are legally admitted.
The only reasons allowed for border searches are ensuring that individuals are legally admitted (inapplicable here because citizens are always legally entitled to enter) and preventing contraband from entering.
A wiped phone can't contain contraband, so wiping the phone serves the same purpose as a search. It's not destroying evidence anymore than throwing away a water bottle before going through TSA is destroying evidence.
> A wiped phone can't contain contraband, so wiping the phone serves the same purpose as a search.
While this is the most compelling argument I've seen surrounding this case and this specific context, the initial attempt to enter with the contraband is likely a crime on its own - partial entry has already happened, the acts in question happened on US soil.
Imagine applying the same concept to drugs (and "body is a container" was found unconstitutional long ago, so no need to opine there) - if you're subject to a search and you eat drugs, does that somehow absolve you of the original attempt to smuggle?
In general, there is not. For the border search exemption to allow a warrantless search of a citizen, the only legitimate grounds are preventing countraband from entering the country.
this is a nonsense statement. yes, unfortunately format logic is wholly inadequate to express what we need in the creation and application of laws. so yes, fuzzy issues about the intent of the law and the intent of the accused some into play, along with a healthy schmear of cultural norms.
but to say that the laws and precedence aren't largely concerned with building some semantic context, and that lawyers don't build chains of reasoning in that framework to prophet their positions is absolute nonsense.
you're positing a world where a judge just rules entirely on feels, and I think most judges would be quite offended by that notion.
Sure lawyers rely on semantics. But I said “silly semantics”.
Claiming that destroying evidence of a crime proves no crime was committed is the logic of a 1 year old who thinks the world disappears when they close their eyes.
A lawyer can go into court and argue semantics around the edges but isn’t going to get very far using semantics to argue destroying evidence also erases a crime.
The border search exemption can't be used for general purpose law enforcement; only for determining if the person should be allowed to enter the country (inapplicable to citizens) and for preventing countraband from entering the country.
A wiped phone cannot contain contraband data, so the border search exemption cannot apply.
I see a vast gulf between searching a truck of produce driven by a non-citizen vs intercepting a citizen at the boarder with known affiliations with the opposing political party.
And it's impossible to ignore that context. This is plainly wrong. And people trying to justify this plainly fascist search is sickening.
Even Wikipedia spells out that invasive searches require "reasonable suspicion." So we return to the core question... suspicion of what? Suspicion is not a crime. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception
"The government is allowed to use scanning devices and to search personal electronics. Invasive bodily searches, however, require reasonable suspicion." is what the article says
The original text is basically useless. They're more like a mission statement rather than directives. They set up broad aspirations, but the implementation has to be aggregated over literally millions of pages of judicial decisions.
Even lawyers with extremely different ideologies will give you convergent answers in a lot of cases, even when those answers conflict with an apparently obvious reading of the original text. Explaining that would require drilling down into details of thousands of court cases -- like reading a complex proof of a seemingly simple theorem.
I don't like that any more than you do. It's not mathematics, and even when given all the details, I usually find their inferences laughably bad -- even when I agree with the conclusion. It's not "logic" as I apply it as a logician, philosopher, or software developer. Lawyers (people on my side ideologically) will insist on the soundness of reasoning for decisions that they don't like but accept as valid.
So I don't find quoting the Constitution to be of any utility. None of those words what you think they mean. And fixing that requires basically throwing out the entire system of American jurisprudence. Which would be fine with me, to be honest.
And that alone is already a pretty scandalous problem. If the law is not stated in a way that ordinary people can understand, how the hell are they supposed to obey it? Those who cannot afford the highly paid law explainers are basically locked out of society.
I don't think you're entirely wrong, but the Constitution binds the government, not citizens. The government can damn well afford to know what the 4th and 5th Amendments mean.
> None of those words what you think they mean. And fixing that requires basically throwing out the entire system of American jurisprudence. Which would be fine with me, to be honest.
The Constitution is written in plain English. And for the most part, Supreme Court decisions are written in plain English that any reasonably literate US citizen can understand. Yes, the law has technicalities and terms of art just like any other profession.
But one of the most damaging mentalities in modern times is the idea that the common man is incapable of understanding the law at even a basic level. This is flat-out not the case. Which leads to the follow-on problem: people who think lawyers have the ability to cast magic mumbo-jumbo spells that "get their clients off on a technicality" somehow. The best quote I ever heard about that from an attorney was "any time someone says a person 'got off on a technicality,' you can pretty much just safely replace that in your head with 'had their constitutional rights egregiously violated.'"
Yes, there are problems. Qualified immunity is a problem. Prosecutorial misconduct can be a problem. Abuse of discretion at the border is a problem. But that's different from doomerism about the entire justice system to the degree Very Online people express it.
The words are actually extremely clear and its exceptionally prudent to quote them, because nobody with a brain can read them and fail see that the government is simply being unconstitutional - all over the place. Even when the people are powerless, we dont have to give up our powers of seeing the truth. Your post and this whole idea that "the words dont mean what they say they mean" is frankly doublespeak of the lowest form.
> we dont have to give up our powers of seeing the truth
The truth is that the constitution is interpreted by humans in a common law context, and enforced by the apparatus of state, which has the means to impose its will. Calling this doublespeak is weird.
When its "interpreted" in a way that directly contradicts the words themselves then its not an interpretation, its a smokescreen to try and cover up the fact people in power dont want to follow the constitution and are not planning on doing so.
Serious question: What happens when every consumer phone has this "feature"? If a citizen records someone committing a crime, will that video still be considered admissible in court? Or will the state only regard its own systems as infallible?
A few years ago (2020?), at the beginning of the new-AI (GAN?), someone took a photo a building at night with windows with green/brown curtains, and the AI hallucinated the face of a famous actor. I have been trying to google it for a few minutes, but I don't remember enough details to fell lucky.
Tesla given $60M by Obama admin when they were deep in debt and may have gone out of business.
so Tesla technically is subsidized by US govt. SpaceX too. Without NASA funding, they'd be long out of business.
China and US ain't that different.
China realizes that being a tech and industrial powerhouse working on future tech is great for their economy. They bet huge on it. That's how they win.
US EVs were "lightly" subsidized compared to what the Chinese govt has done. In the ballpark of 250 billion dollars by the Chinese vs maybe 10% of that by the US.
1. Personal Computers are personal. Inviting an outside observer into one is no different than inviting one into the bathroom. What I do in there is my business.
2. Friction. This is likely MS's attempt to slow-walk Windows into a subscription service. If nobody resisted, that walk wouldn't be slow.
If you're looking for a backpack, I can't recommend Osprey enough. They are still a independent US company with a lifetime warranty they actually stand by. I had to call their customer service just last week after I ordered the wrong size bag. I was connected to an actual human immediately, and he sent me a prepaid return label, even though it was my fault and I was fully expecting to pay for return shipping myself. I own several of their bags and have never had a single issue with any of them.
There is a whole community of bag enthusiasts who intricately review backpacks. Packhacker etc. It's super easy to find reviews of most backpacks and plenty of video reviews detailing every feature on the bag - and even in some cases reviews after a few months of usage. Day one might feel great, but after a few trips you start noticing flaws.
I'd echo what one of the other commenters here said about AER and Cotopaxi. Although I have to say wearing my Cotopaxi Alppa 35l feels like a small child is trying to drag me to the floor compared to the comfort of having the AER straps on my back for the travel pack. I still love both though.
Aer is sort of an interesting case to me. At its core the nylon material they use certainly make the bags feel like they'd last forever.
But I feel like Aer also tends to include features or materials that are just not designed for BIFL longevity. Two that jump to mind are the PU coatings on a lot of their zippers and their use of elastic straps as the main way to secure water bottles (but they might be moving away from the elastic on their newest bags). Both of those feel like they have a much more limited lifespan (relative to some of the other aspects of the bags).
+1 to that and I'll also add Cotopaxi and AER (quite expensive but built like a tank) to the list.
My year-ish old backpack gave out so I recently committed to extensively researching and buying a new set of travel + tech bags that will last me basically forever, and I've been very happy with my purchases from these brands.
I have an Osprey backpacking pack that's about 10 years old. I had a squirrel chew through the zipper on the removable pouch. I sent it off to Osprey to be repaired and they sent me a brand new pouch.
Osprey USED to be good, but their quality has been on a sharp decline for the past decade.
The Farpoint is a case in point. I have an older one where the mini-backpack actually zipped onto the bigger one, and had a proper lifting handle integrated for lifting when it's lying flat (among other niceties). I accidentally left butter in it, and the smell was so bad that no amount of cleaning would expunge it. I just bought another one.
Absolute SHIT quality compared to my old one, the mini backpack now buckled rather pathetically to the big one, and no more solid handles (except the top one). Structural integrity is WEAK.
Needless to say I spent a LOT of time and effort cleaning up my old Farpoint, which I'm now using again. The "new" one? Sitting in storage along with the rest of my buyer's remorse.
My favorite bags I've had are from Mystery Ranch, but they're from before the Yeti acquisition, and I haven't tried any since, so I don't know how quality has held up. I do know they've eliminated a ton of their catalog.
Mystery Ranch is still doing pretty well for themselves. (I'm amused knowing that they crank out harnesses for Amazon employees left and right for their robot safety systems.)
I'm also a Red Oxx guy. Love my Sky Train backpack when I'm flying out. They quote a "no bull" warranty, and their CEO suggests to "be sure to include them in your will."
I'll add that I've had a very positive experience with a Projekt Gravy backpack since we're dropping favorite products. Excellent quality and I've been using this thing daily since 2021.
Top 1st-level comment tree involves passionate, math-based analyses of several decades of economic adjustments. Redefinitions of inflation adjustments ad nauseum; a math geek's approach to social sciences - which is not the subject of the article at all.
2nd 1st-level comment is a response to the title alone: a current, good backpack brand, with really no relevance to the subject of the article at all.
The same thing it was designed to do and has always done: create unimaginable sums of money out of thin air that it loans to the government, with interest.
How about if you run this loop (one year from now) on this kind of hardware but with something like Claude/Kimi K2. How about that? Because that's where it'll go.
I can't shake the feeling that the RAM shortage was intentionally created to serve as a sort of artificial moat by slowing or outright preventing the adoption of open weight models. Altman is playing with hundreds of billions of other people's dollars, trying to protect (in his mind) a multi-trillion dollar company. If he could spend a few billion to shut down access to the hardware people need to run competitor's products, why wouldn't he?
From what I understand the RAM producers see the writing on the wall. They’re not going to invest in massively more capacity only to have it sit completely idle in 10 years.
RAM shortage is probably a bubble indicator itself. That industry doesn’t believe enough in the long term demand to build out more capacity.
It's very difficult to "intentionally create" a real shortage. You can hoard as much as you want, but people will expect you to dump it all right back onto the market unless you really have a higher-value use for the stuff you hoarded (And then you didn't intentionally create anything, you just bought something you needed!).
Plus producers will now feel free to expand production and dump even more onto the market. This is great if you needed that amount of supply, but it's terrible if you were just trying to deprive others.
If you haven't already.
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