Make sure not to have any Molly Ivins columns on your laptop when you leave your house, or anything critical of Dear Leader for that matter. And especially don't have anything illegal (like time-shifted DVDs, or guitar tabs) on your laptop, cellphone, iPod, brain implant....
(civil rights being slaughtered, by Michael Palin)
From Declan McCullagh, we read:
Police blotter: Cops OK to copy cell phone content | CNET News.com
...
The U.S. Constitution's Fourth Amendment, of course, prohibits “unreasonable” searches and seizures. In general, a search without a warrant is viewed as unreasonable.But searches when a person is arrested are an exception to that general rule. In this case, the judge upheld the search as constitutional, saying that: “An officer's need to preserve evidence is an important law enforcement component of the rationale for permitting a search of a suspect incident to a valid arrest.”
This raises issues--especially when hard drives that can store intimate life details are growing in capacity and shrinking in size. If someone is arrested for speeding and has a laptop next to him on the seat, Crow's reasoning could mean that a law enforcement officer is permitted to seize the laptop and copy its entire contents. Homeland Security already has the authority to do that at border crossings, according to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Tags: civil_liberties, /civil_rights
