> I suspect you may know this, but there exist many locations and circumstances wherein various rights are suspended.
It sounds like this recent ruling may have rendered that page out of date.
From your link:
> According to the government, however, these basic constitutional principles do not apply fully at our borders. For example, at border crossings (also called "ports of entry"), federal authorities do not need a warrant or even suspicion of wrongdoing to justify conducting what courts have called a "routine search," such as searching luggage or a vehicle.
From the OP:
> In a major victory for privacy rights, a federal court in Boston today ruled that the government’s suspicionless searches of international travelers’ smartphones and laptops at airports and other U.S. ports of entry violate the Fourth Amendment. The ruling came in a lawsuit, Alasaad v. McAleenan, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and ACLU of Massachusetts, on behalf of 11 travelers whose smartphones and laptops were searched without individualized suspicion at U.S. ports of entry.
"It sounds like this recent ruling may have rendered that page out of date."
Not exactly. Here, the only change is related to digital devices being searched. Everything else that happens at the border regarding searches is unchanged. So the limitation of the 4th amendment is still largely unaltered. But the protections have now been extended to digital devices only at border searches.
The article doesn't go into it (maybe the actual USSC does?) but I assume the logic here is that the reasoning behind the 4th amendment border search exception in the first place is to monitor what's coming across the border in terms of physical contraband (drugs, guns, animals, foods, etc.). There aren't really any concerns with digital devices. They are legal and anything done with them that might be illegal isn't related to the device crossing the border. And much of what can be done with them can also be done with any cheap device purchased in the states or using a cloud service (in the modern era). So randomly searching the devices doesn't really do much of anything related to border protection.
Ok so why do they do it? They're many examples. This one isn't even especially good because this employee was protecting his employer's privacy rather than his own.
> Part of a Broader Problem: The spread of border-related powers inland is inseparable from the broader expansion of government intrusion in the lives of ordinary Americans. For example, CBP claims the authority to conduct suspicionless searches of travelers' electronic devices—such as laptops and cell phones—at ports of entry, including international arrivals at airports. These searches are particularly invasive as a result of the wealth of personal information stored on such devices. At least one circuit court has held that federal officers must have at least "reasonable suspicion" prior to conducting such searches and recent Supreme Court precedent seems to support that view.
Although the court ruled that such searches require reasonable suspicion the court also denied any form of injunctive relieve forbidding CBP or ICE from conducting such searches in cases where there is no reasonable suspicion. Until such an injunction is given expect CBP and ICE agents to continue to perform searches based upon current agency policy.
It sounds like this recent ruling may have rendered that page out of date.
From your link:
> According to the government, however, these basic constitutional principles do not apply fully at our borders. For example, at border crossings (also called "ports of entry"), federal authorities do not need a warrant or even suspicion of wrongdoing to justify conducting what courts have called a "routine search," such as searching luggage or a vehicle.
From the OP:
> In a major victory for privacy rights, a federal court in Boston today ruled that the government’s suspicionless searches of international travelers’ smartphones and laptops at airports and other U.S. ports of entry violate the Fourth Amendment. The ruling came in a lawsuit, Alasaad v. McAleenan, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and ACLU of Massachusetts, on behalf of 11 travelers whose smartphones and laptops were searched without individualized suspicion at U.S. ports of entry.