And yet the fourth amendment says what it says. I&#x27;m prepared to agree to disagree with the Supreme Court on the subject, but the bill of rights is, to me, clear.

&gt; 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and circumstances wherein various rights are suspended.It sounds like this recent ruling may have rendered that page out of date.From your link:&gt; According to the government, however, these basic constitutional principles do not apply fully at our borders. For example, at border crossings (also called &quot;ports of entry&quot;), federal authorities do not need a warrant or even suspicion of wrongdoing to justify conducting what courts have called a &quot;routine search,&quot; such as searching luggage or a vehicle.From the OP:&gt; 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.

Saying &quot;rights are suspended&quot; is a very nice way of putting it. Sounds more legit that way than what I call it, &quot;the government breaking it&#x27;s own laws&quot;.

I suspect you may know this, but there exist many locations and circumstances wherein various rights are suspended.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.aclu.org&#x2F;other&#x2F;constitution-100-mile-border-zone" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.aclu.org&#x2F;other&#x2F;constitution-100-mile-border-zone</a>

But the searches are being done by agents of the government, the constitution limits what the government can do

What do you mean? The searches happened at US ports of entry on US soil and were conducted by agents of the US government. In many cases the victims were US citizens. It was already a clear 4th amendment violation; the court has merely affirmed that.

To be fair, these searches were prior to entering the United States.In the United States, such an act would clearly be against the 4th Amendment. It was less clear here.

This decision only covers electronic devices. All other items can still be searched without suspicion or warrant at the border, see here: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Border_search_exception" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Border_search_exception</a>

&quot;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.&quot;Sounds like the Court got it right.

Slight correction: &quot;suspicionless searches OF ELECTRONIC DEVICES.&quot; Suspicionless searches of all air travelers is still very legal.

Don&#x27;t confuse the lack of a Senate-approved director with a lack of someone in power at a government agency. There are very much people running the Department of Homeland Security.

Good. Also given there is no one running Homeland Security I wonder if it&#x27;s even likely that this will be pushed to the SC.

&quot;The same thing that stops all tyranny. A vigilant and engaged citizen body.&quot;Because I&#x27;m interested, what would be the top three situations where that happened that come to your mind?

Do these suspicions require some sort of preliminary-evidence of those suspicions before acted upon?

Suing any LEO is hard. Patriot Act covered this: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=km4uCOAzrbM" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=km4uCOAzrbM</a>I agree donating to ACLU, EFF and similar orgs is our best option. Most of us do not get prosecuted unjustly, but we need to pool resources to defend those that do.

&gt; what stops the TSA&#x2F;DHS from saying &quot;We suspect you are a terrorist; please unlock your phone&quot;?The same thing that stops all tyranny. A vigilant and engaged citizen body.Practically, this means donating to the ACLU and related groups. It also means, if you’re party to injustice, suing or reaching out to organisation who can help you sue to assert our rights.

To add onto this, unreasonable doesn’t mean “unfair”. It means “backed by reason”.Like in a jury case, reasonable doubt doesn’t mean “a small level of doubt is acceptable”. It means that “aliens made me do it” is not sufficient to counter evidence.

They don&#x27;t have to articulate their reasonable suspicion to you, they need to articulate their reasonable suspicion to the court.

And if they tell you stuff it? What are you going to do.The best approach is to know your rights, remind them of them, then let them do what they are going to do.Bad searches get solved in court, not at the time of the search. You may get lucky and have them back down if it&#x27;s clear you know they have no right to search, but I wouldn&#x27;t bet on it.

Ask them to explain what their reasonable suspicion basis for wanting to search your phone is.  Without reasonable suspicion it&#x27;s, by definition, an unreasonable search.

This has to be the top comment in this thread. If you think about it why does anyone have to follow the law? Because there are consequences for when they don&#x27;t. In this case, as my parent OP correctly states, there&#x27;s legal precedent and case law on what a reasonable suspicion is. The agent should be able to go to a court, in front of a judge and be able to state what made him&#x2F;her suspicious of you. If they can&#x27;t, all evidence they collected during that search will be thrown out. That could basically kill the case. That&#x27;d be the motivation for the agent to at least come up with a plausible story on why they want to search you.

“suspicionless searches” refers to searches without reasonable suspicion; absent particular evidence providing grounds for reasonable suspicion particular to the searched individual, any search would remain “suspicionless” as the term is used in 4th Amendment law; the test has both subjective (was there actual suspicion) and objective (was that suspicion reasonably grounded) elements.

Hopefully you don&#x27;t need to visit grandma, the onus is now on you to defend your rights. Like Ghassan and Nadia Alasaad and the nine other people who resisted similar requests from the government.

Presumably this gives you a much stronger case if you then decide to sue. If enough people do that, it starts to become a deterrent.

Nothing.  What happens is if the cause for the search was insufficient, the case gets kicked out in court.

I though the &quot;reasonable suspicion&quot; needs to be documented and so is the search. Otherwise, this law might reduce the number of searches but not the abuse of it.

OK, so what stops the TSA&#x2F;DHS from saying &quot;We suspect you are a terrorist; please unlock your phone&quot;? Their actions have effectively said that for almost 20 years.

&gt; That&#x27;s been the common law since King Tut.Much immigration law is pure statute and dates from the 20th century. Border enforcement has varied hugely, and often included internal border and migration enforcement.(The British Empire had almost what we would call EU-style &quot;free movement&quot; exactly up to the point where nonwhite people started taking advantage of it in significant numbers, with the Ugandan Asians fleeing Idi Amin in the 60s.)

Not quite. I’m saying that liberal judges tend to ignore the law when it comes to highly political issues.For example, how many opinions have you read from Ginsburg where she says “I personally disagree with this outcome, but the law is clear.”? Quite rarely.

To interpret words, as a judge does, is inherently biased.Just because two people disagree on an interpretation of law does not mean they are not applying that law in good faith - we all have worldviews and beliefs that naturally color our understanding of reality - which includes our understanding of laws.We attempt to write laws clearly to avoid personal interpretation, but it&#x27;s impossible to avoid all interpretation. Thus we appoint wise judges to do so for society. Even wise judges have unique worldviews.

Richard Posner from the 7th circuit said something like this: (a) decide which way one wants to rule (b) find the relevant reasoning to effect (a).What we are told is the other way around, a fiction: Reasoning drives the decisions.Sure, judges can&#x27;t decide arbitrarily. They have a range of reasonings, a set of outcomes, along with prevailing political&#x2F;intellectual&#x2F;economic winds. Just pick an appropriate combination.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Denise_J._Casper" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Denise_J._Casper</a> Obama Judge.But you should realize you are basically saying Judges are not impartial arbiters, but rather biased based on who appointed them.

&gt; That&#x27;s been the common law since King Tut.Common law started long after King Tut, and in any case the Constitution isn&#x27;t overridden by common law where they conflict. While this particular issue has been controversial, there idea that you have no rights at the border is unsupportable either in the text of the Constitution or the case law, and you should feel cheated that you had two professors that did such an inexcusably bad job of explaining the law, if your description of their lessons is correct.

Haven&#x27;t read the opinion, but I&#x27;d anticipate that this will be reversed on appeal. My guess is that this was either an Obama or Clinton judge.Both my Crim Pro and Con Law professors skipped border search cases and summed them up with &quot;you have no rights at the border.&quot; That&#x27;s been the common law since King Tut.

Kudos to the ACLU and the EFF for standing up for what is right.

Hmm.  Has the Supreme Court ever ruled that the &quot;special Constitution zone&quot; was constitutional?  Because, on its face, it looks like it&#x27;s not...

&gt; There is no such thing.No, you admit there is such a thing, you just call it something differently. We&#x27;re clearly talking about the same thing, whatever we choose to call it, it exists.What you call &quot;executive asserted zone in which [the constitutional protection against unreasonable searches and seizures does not apply]&quot;, I call a &quot;no Constitution zone&quot;. It&#x27;s clearer.As far as activism goes, the way I see it: we can either use plain language to convey a pretty good approximation of the situation, and help people understand the crazy state of people&#x27;s rights at the border, or dress it up in business language like a government-sanctioned PR release and lose a listener&#x27;s interest immediately.Someone probably learned about the zone from this very thread, which wouldn&#x27;t exist had I not been provocative. And is it really provocative to point out that something&#x27;s not right?

&gt; Does this apply to the &quot;special Constitution zone&quot; that intrudes 100 miles inland from the US border?This is specifically about border searches, so, insofar as such a zone exists (the description is hyperbolic and more useful for motivating activism that any kind of analytical application), yes.&gt; Doesn&#x27;t matter if it&#x27;s constitutional or not if you&#x27;re in a no-constitution zone.There is no such thing. There is an executive-asserted 100 mile zone (statute only says a reasonable distance, and AFAIK courts have not ruled on actual boundaries) from the border in which federal officials can conduct warrantless searches of vehicles to identify people without legal permission to be in the country.

Does this apply to the &quot;special Constitution zone&quot; that intrudes 100 miles inland from the US border? Doesn&#x27;t matter if it&#x27;s constitutional or not if you&#x27;re in a no-constitution zone.

It doesn’t work. The TSA is horrendously ineffective and is the definition of security theatre. This just hurts people needlessly.Much like the no fly list which is a huge violation of due process.

It&#x27;s bad because it doesn&#x27;t work. Your hypothetical is just that, hypothetical. Doesn&#x27;t work in practice. Also, violated due process.

I&#x27;ll (possibly inaccurately) assume this is in good faith. The most obvious reason that profiling is bad, even in your inaccurate and simplistic hypothetical scenario, is that just because all airplane terrorist attacks came from people of X country, does not imply that everyone from X country commits terrorist airplane attacks. Therefore you are unfairly and immorally forcing invasive searches on many innocent people of X country. If you have any empathy for the innocent people of X country, you will realize how horrible this is.

Your opinion is unpopular because it makes no sense and does not improve security. The attacker will simply recruit a &quot;Yian&quot; because that&#x27;s your blind spot now.

Xians can just start coming in from Y country.

Certainly an unpopular opinion, but perhaps the comment you&#x27;re responding to means profiling in a different way?The way I typically understand profiling is that it&#x27;s done to anyone who has features (skin tone, facial hair, clothes, etc) similar to Xians regardless of those people&#x27;s actual origin.And since it&#x27;s trivial to change your appearance from Xian to whatever-ian it seems pretty useless to profile in that way. Also, really annoying and alienating for those who happen to look like Xian.

&gt; why is profiling bad in context of airplane security?Why is airplane security different than other contexts?&gt; 100% of airplane terrorist attacks are carried out by people of X country (Xians), and 0% of airplane terrorist attacks are carried out by people from Y countryThat&#x27;s not the real world. There have been white terrorists, christian terrorists, etc. There have been muslim terrorists from most countries. Sometimes they don&#x27;t look culturally muslim at a glance - maybe we should bring back Fumi-e?<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Fumi-e" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Fumi-e</a>&gt; I say profile the heck out of Xians. Stop and frisk 100% of Xians and 0% of Yians.As an islamic terrorist, you just gave me a fantastic idea about how to beat your security. I won&#x27;t go into detail, don&#x27;t want to make it too easy in case some other terror group also figures out how to look like a WASP.

Bruce Schneier had a series of blog posts on that subject, as part of a debate with Sam Harris. Pursuing a strategy that discounts the effects of false negatives leads to whole categories of failures in identifying risks. It&#x27;s analogous to debates about medical screening - by narrowly focusing on detection, we discount the negative effects of over testing, which can lead to perverse outcomes where we hurt patients more than we help.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.schneier.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;archives&#x2F;2012&#x2F;05&#x2F;the_trouble_wit.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.schneier.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;archives&#x2F;2012&#x2F;05&#x2F;the_trouble_w...</a>

If it were the case (with 100% and 0%), then sure. But that is not the case.

Because it disproportionally burdens all innocent Xians who did nothing wrong.

It sounds like you don’t care about the damage done by searching innocent people. Of course, if you don’t care about that, then just search 100% of all people! Why profile at all?

So what you&#x27;re proposing is that we should take the set of countries that have had an airplane terrorist and check 100% of people from those countries, and none of the others? So
because once a British man tried to light his shoes on fire to blow up a plane we should specially check 100% of the 3.8 million British citizens traveling to the US per year, but we should check 0% of those traveling on North Korean passports? Your opinion might be unpopular because it&#x27;s bad.

For the same reason you try to avoid machine learning models from overfitting. If you train a cats vs. dogs machine learning model but all your cat pictures are indoors and all dog pictures are outdoors, the model may inadvertently learn to recognise indoors vs. outdoors instead of learning cat vs. dog features, and will fail miserably on an image of a cat outdoors.In your case, first of all, it&#x27;s not 100%. Suppose 90% of attacks are by Xians and 10% are Yians.Profiling Xians over Yians might mean that you catch 90% of attacks. Maybe 95% if you search some Yians.On the other hand, learning to properly identify threats, independent of Xian vs. Yian, might allow you to catch 99.9% of attacks.

Unpopular opinion: why is profiling bad in context of airplane security?If 100% of airplane terrorist attacks are carried out by people of X country (Xians), and 0% of airplane terrorist attacks are carried out by people from Y country (Yians), it seems like a pointless charade of political correctness to check Xians and Yians with equal frequency.I say profile the heck out of Xians. Stop and frisk 100% of Xians and 0% of Yians.

Fair. Insert relevant authorities instead; the principle is of more concern than the implementing authority in this situation.

This ruling has nothing to do with TSA. TSA does not control US borders.

Open question, here: Doesn&#x27;t this backfire and make TSA more likely to operate on the basis of profiling alone? What makes a traveler suspect?This reminds me of Sowell&#x27;s distinction between &#x27;Type I&#x27; and &#x27;Type II&#x27; discrimination: when all other information is forbidden from you, you&#x27;ll end up using the only information you have as your heuristic, however noisy and biased that information might be compared to a more comprehensive source. This leads to incidental systemic discrimination.That said, if &#x27;suspicionless&#x27; is tied to concrete external evidence rather than mere profiling, this should be a good move.

No.&gt; As part of the relief sought, Plaintiffs seek expungement of all information gathered from, or copies made of, the contents of Plaintiffs’ electronic devices including social media information and device passwords. [...] Although this is not a criminal case, considering the remedy for the unconstitutional search in the criminal context is illustrative of the extraordinary nature of the remedy sought here. Even where law enforcement officers have conducted a search in violation of the Constitution, the “fruits of [the] search need not be suppressed if the agents acted with the objectively reasonable belief that their actions did not violate the Fourth Amendment.” [...] even where criminal proceedings followed a border search that exceeded the bounds of the Fourth Amendment and the fruits of same were suppressed, expungement of the border agents’ files would not necessarily follow. Nor should it where other deterrents to border agents’ unconstitutional searches remain in place. [...] In light of this other relief, including declaratory relief, the Court DENIES the request for expungement of information<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.aclu.org&#x2F;sites&#x2F;all&#x2F;libraries&#x2F;pdf.js&#x2F;web&#x2F;viewer.html?file=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.aclu.org%2Fsites%2Fdefault%2Ffiles%2Ffield_document%2Falasaad_opinion_summary_judgment.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.aclu.org&#x2F;sites&#x2F;all&#x2F;libraries&#x2F;pdf.js&#x2F;web&#x2F;viewer.h...</a>

So will the CBP be ordered to destroy all the images they made of devices searched at the border?

That&#x27;s not true.
the Consitution makes a distinction between &#x27;person&#x27; and &#x27;citizen&#x27;, but is painfully ambiguous about &#x27;People&#x27;. In context, &#x27;people&#x27; most likely means &#x27;citizens&#x27;.
Even if you mean &#x27;persons&#x27;, not &#x27;people&#x27;, it&#x27;s still largely ambiguous.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.senate.gov&#x2F;civics&#x2F;constitution_item&#x2F;constitution.htm" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.senate.gov&#x2F;civics&#x2F;constitution_item&#x2F;constitution...</a>&#x27;People&#x27; have rights:&gt; the right of the people peaceably to assemble&gt; the right of the people to keep and bear Arms,&gt; the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects&gt; other [right]s retained by the people.&gt; [powers] are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.&#x27;People&#x27; usually means &#x27;voters&#x27;:&gt; chosen every second Year by the People of the several States&gt; The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof,&gt; the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct.Government is made of &#x27;citizens&#x27;:&gt; No Person shall be a Representative who shall not have ... been seven Years a Citizen of the United States,[etc for Senator, President]and &#x27;citizens&#x27; are covered by Federal Judiciary in interstate cases and interstate rights:&gt; judicial Power shall extend to all Cases ... between Citizens and ...&gt; The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.Amendment XIV (1868) clarifies the difference between a &#x27;person&#x27; and &#x27;citizen&#x27;, to some [insufficient] extent.&gt; All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.and makes the most interesting statement about the rights of a &#x27;person&#x27;&gt; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.The reality is that the Constituation does not explain what are the rights of non-citizen persons, wihile at the same time repeatedly stating that not all persons are citizens.You can split hairs on the wording, and many judges have, but the truth is that the authors just didn&#x27;t write carefully about visitors and non-citizen immigrants, since international travel was very difficult in the 18th and 19th Centuries so not a big deal (except for slavery, which was a whole different mess).

I&#x27;m not sure about the legal justification, but I don&#x27;t think that is true in practice. For example a tourist or someone on an expired visa (edit: or an unexpired but non-immigrant visa) doesn&#x27;t have the same 2A rights as a US citizen or permanent resident.

Except travelers are not &quot;on us soil&quot; until granted entry by customs. Customs could just deny entry if foreign travelers won&#x27;t voluntarily consent to search.

at the border you are not yet on US soil. They can deny you for any reason at all

That&#x27;s completely untrue, as much as it would make sense for it to be. In fact, constitutional rights have not been applied universally to noncitizens by courts. Everything from the First Amendment onward has been limited by case law as it applies to non-US persons.

Your reasoning may be correct, but not quite so obvious to courts. For instance, foreigners&#x27; right to keep and bare arms is routinely violated, even though they are people.

Aside from all the arguments brought up so far, there&#x27;s that word &quot;unreasonable&quot; which the courts have historically interpreted with an &quot;expectation of privacy&quot; standard. You have a high expectation of privacy when you&#x27;re in your house, somewhat less when you&#x27;re in a car, and much less when you&#x27;re entering an airport or crossing a border.In the old days, it was routine for customs officers to search ships coming in to harbor, including the effects of their passengers, to enforce importation laws. If customs couldn&#x27;t do this, then importation laws would have no teeth, which is clearly not the intention of the constitution, which gives Congress the explicit power to enact and enforce them.CBP argues that their smartphone and laptop searches were just an extension of that old custom, the court disagreed, ruling that a smartphone or laptop is fundamentally different from a ship&#x27;s log or traveler&#x27;s trunk, such that a higher expectation of privacy exists.

One of the best things about the USA here

If you&#x27;re on US soil you&#x27;re subject to US law, including all provisions of the Constitution. And the Constitution makes a distinction between &#x27;citizens&#x27; and &#x27;people&#x27; (i.e., everybody, including noncitizens)

My understanding of Heller was that it expanded rather than contracted the rights of the people against the excessive regulation of the state?[EDIT:] great link, thanks!

Good question. I was going to say &quot;yes&quot; but the Heller decision has made that less clear.

It&#x27;s no more or less disturbing for journalists to be subjected to this. They&#x27;re not some special class of protected people.

And a NASA scientist with top secret info on his device, too

There are cases of doing this to U.S. Citizens, in some cases, quite disturbingly, to journalists.

That&#x27;s an interesting question. It&#x27;s not restricted to only citizens (so applies to immigrants, etc.) but may not extend as travelers who are passing through or has no real connection to the country.  Ref: US vs. Verdugo-Urquidez

That&#x27;s a silly (mis)characterization of what this is. Some rights are only afforded to the citizenry, and that is not inherently evil and is often the only reasonable approach. Other rights are afforded to everyone. The discussion centers around teasing out what the Constitution means when it uses person&#x2F;people.

It’s a bummer there is still so much serious political discussion about which people count as people.

While this is very relevant in a broad sense, it isn&#x27;t at matter in this case.The plaintiffs are 10 U.S. citizens and one lawful permanent resident.

If non-citizens are treated perfectly equally to citizens, what is the point in having a distinction between citizens and non-citizens?

It&#x27;s unfortunate that this is a reasonable question. I&#x27;ve been surprised to learn how conditional being treated like a human being really is (location, citizenship, etc.). It would be my preference for my country to treat all people  kindly, fairly, equally.

Some of the Bill of Rights are fundamental human rights, like right to free speach and right to bear arms.Others are not, like the Tenth Amendment.The 4th Amendment is probably closer to the first category rather than the second.

I would argue that any individual deserves most or all rights outlined in the Bill of Rights, regardless of citizenship or geographic location. These are fundamental human rights. I&#x27;m aware this is not how the constitution is written, it&#x27;s just my opinion.

&gt; But are travelers (foreigners)International travelers entering the US (who were subjected to the policy) are not all foreigners.&gt; part of &quot;the people&quot;?Yes, &quot;the people&quot; in the Fourth Amendment (and most of the rest of the Constitution) are the people subject to the authority of the United States government, which is basically everyone within US territory, however transitorily, and not exempt from US authority by treaty (e.g., diplomats, etc., are excluded.)

Yes. The Constitution is very careful in its use of &quot;people&quot; (or &quot;person&quot;) and &quot;citizens&quot;.

But are travelers (foreigners) part of &quot;the people&quot;?

The Constitution does not specify punishments for violating it. Congress could pass legislation specifying punishments in accordance with this ruling, but it would not be retroactive.

As an American I&#x27;m very confused why clear constitutional violations don&#x27;t warrant any repercussions on the perpetrating individuals.So I work for a company that deals with medical data, if I violate HIPAA, I don&#x27;t get to just keep doing it until a federal court says stop and then walk away as if nothing happened. I&#x27;m personally held responsible for those violations. Not just my company, me.Why aren&#x27;t each of these agents that obviously and egregiously violated the constitution subject to imprisonment or fines for each violation?

The level that the bill of rights applies to non-residents isn&#x27;t very clear. The fourth amendment specifies the right of &quot;the people&quot;, but it doesn&#x27;t expand on who this includes. Some interpretations have it as us residents, some have it as all people.

It was always CLEARLY unconstitutional. It&#x27;s worrying it took so long to have it declared as such.

Unfortunately there is still parallel construction: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Parallel_construction" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Parallel_construction</a>Honest question: can illegally obtained evidence be used to get a search warrant?

Besides &quot;parallel construction&quot;, there is a third-party doctrine: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Third-party_doctrine" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Third-party_doctrine</a>

That&#x27;s certainly a crucial protection but if law enforcement conducts an embarrassing or destructive search (such as when police recently blew up a man&#x27;s home), they can still essentially end you.But yes, it&#x27;s good that you can&#x27;t be simultaneously nailed in court with illegally collected evidence.* <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;2019&#x2F;10&#x2F;30&#x2F;774788611&#x2F;police-owe-nothing-to-man-whose-home-they-blew-up-appeals-court-says" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;2019&#x2F;10&#x2F;30&#x2F;774788611&#x2F;police-owe-nothing-...</a>

&gt; if law enforcement finds evidence of guilt via illegal search, they cannot use that evidence in court.This is not strictly correct. If law enforcement violates your rights via an illegal search, they cannot use that evidence against you. However, they may be able to use the evidence against others.For example, suppose the police illegally search your house and find drugs and a list of customers. You may be able to exclude that evidence from being used against you but your customers may not be so lucky because it was not their 4th Amendment rights that were violated by the illegal search.

Unless they claim to be acting in &quot;Good faith&quot;, that is, didn&#x27;t think at the time that the search was improper and it wasn&#x27;t clearly settled law.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Carpenter_v._United_States#Subsequent_developments" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Carpenter_v._United_States#Sub...</a>You can win a Supreme Court case about a search being illegal, and still have that evidence be used to nail you on the original charge.

That’s not entirely true - I think the official term is creative reconstruction -and basically once they have evidence then they go back and document all of the things that, with perfect hindsight, would have caused reasonable suspicion so that obtaining the evidence then becomes justified. So John Doe has been caught transporting narcotics, and with perfect hindsight we know that John drives a much more expensive car then his his income allows, so that raised suspicion and justified searching the vehicle where the narcotics were found. That’s how it seems to work more or less.

The point of the law is that even if law enforcement finds evidence of guilt via illegal search, they cannot use that evidence in court. This is a crucial protection for citizens. The point of the ruling isn&#x27;t that it prevents the search, it prevents the result of that search from being used against you. If law enforcement wishes to establish the guilt of a suspect in court, it has to use only evidence it obtained through legal means.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dictionary.law.com&#x2F;Default.aspx?selected=2087" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dictionary.law.com&#x2F;Default.aspx?selected=2087</a>

&gt;Unless you&#x27;ve broken the law (and certain special cases), they have no authority over you.This is not true at the border. They can seize your property, and delay you for what the law would say is temporary, but is long enough to be a major inconvenience.

&gt; surely I can’t impede law enforcement because they haven’t justified their authority to meUnless you&#x27;ve broken the law (and certain special cases), they have no authority over you. Because of the nature of their jobs, which requires them to sometimes take away a person&#x27;s freedom or life, they must be held to a much higher level of accountability than your average person.You cite fear of harassment as a reason for not standing up to police, and to me that says something is deeply wrong with our current system.

A lock screen is a reason for &#x27;reasonable suspicion&#x27;? I&#x27;m not saying you&#x27;re wrong, but it seems unreasonable. If I have a lock on my briefcase it isn&#x27;t reasonable to suggest it&#x27;s full of contraband.

The search of a phone is like a search of any other thing in US law. Generally, searches require a warrant which implicitly requires probable cause, but there are some well-defined exceptions to the warrant requirement, and the probable cause requirement. One of these exceptions is the border search exception. US Courts have previously said this exception is reasonable for various reasons, and is an exception to both the warrant and probable cause requirements. The court in this case says it is an exception only for routine searches, and called the digital searches non-routine which don&#x27;t fall entirely within the existing exception. Rather the court says non-routine searches don&#x27;t require a warrant but do require a reasonable suspicion, a standard still below probable cause. A reasonable suspicion requires only the officer to have a suspicion they can state a reason for. For example, a phone&#x27;s lock screen with CP would satisfy reasonable suspicion.&gt; Would the suspicion have to be announced to me, when I’m asked to unlock my phone[?]No. Officers don&#x27;t have to disclose to you their reasons. It&#x27;s helpful, but not constitutionally required.&gt;[W]ould it have to be presented to a court, when they are asked to prosecute me based on the contents of my phone?Not necessarily. In a criminal prosecution violations of the Fourth Amendment can be excluded by the court. The theory underlying the exclusion is that without the exclusion there would be nothing to stop cops from violating your Fourth Amendment rights. A criminal defendant must challenge the use of the evidence found, and the officer must give their reason when the judge is trying to determine whether to allow the testimony.In the US, you can also sue the officers when they violate your rights and win money damages. That&#x27;s what this case is. The officer as part of their defense must give their reasons to defend they didn&#x27;t violate any constitutional rights.&gt;If they find illegal content on my phone, wouldn’t the prosecutor just tell the court “she matched a profile for the sort of person that carries illegal documents”?Probably. Some courts may additionally require the officer to give a basis of why you fit that profile, or why someone who fits that profile reasonably is likely to carry illegal things. Typically just saying it matches a profile is sufficient.

I’m not sure to whom the reasonable suspicion has to be announced? It makes it hard for me, a lay person, to understand the practical ramifications of this decision.Would the suspicion have to be announced to me, when I’m asked to unlock my phone, or would it have to be presented to a court, when they are asked to prosecute me based on the contents of my phone? If they find illegal content on my phone, wouldn’t the prosecutor just tell the court “she matched a profile for the sort of person that carries illegal documents”?The latter is only meaningful if the case goes to court, which feels like a stretch. There are many forms of punishment that can be meted out without having to go to court. Vexatious detention, confiscation of property, etc.The former seems silly — surely I can’t impede law enforcement because they haven’t justified their authority to me?

And that is why I donate to ACLU every month.

I don&#x27;t have a source at the ready, but my understanding is that the existing law and&#x2F;or case law determined that traveling domestically entitled one to such protection. Various federal agencies have determined via rule making that such protections do not extend to international ports of entry&#x2F;airports for reasons of national security. Those determinations are what have been struck down in this case.

No. TSA doesn&#x27;t search smartphones and laptops, and the searches they do apply to everybody. When you search everybody equally, courts have ruled it&#x27;s not a 4th amendment violation. See drunk driving checkpoints.

&gt; the government’s suspicionless searches of international travelers’ smartphones and laptops at airports and other U.S. ports of entry violate the Fourth AmendmentSo, does this not apply to people flying domestically?

If a border agent is giving me shit, the last thing I&#x27;m worried about is whether or not any evidence they gather is going to be used against me in court.99.9% of the time, the most negative outcome of this kind of interaction will be losing my stuff, being arrested and held for anywhere up to 24 hours, or being denied entry. For most people, these are a compelling enough reasons to comply with a power-tripping border agent. Despite this ruling, your recourse in such a situation will remain quite limited.

Doesn&#x27;t matter.They can still do parallel construction, and can still cause you harm just by detaining you, and they can use your behavior in response to abuse as probable cause to justify further abuse.

But they don’t need to take you to court to refuse you entry and put you on the first flight back home...

Evidence from an illegal search cannot be used in court.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dictionary.law.com&#x2F;Default.aspx?selected=2087" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;dictionary.law.com&#x2F;Default.aspx?selected=2087</a>

Thank you for sharing this, as well as the link of Nielsen getting grilled by a Congressional hero. I&#x27;m inspired. More people need to see this.

There is no constitutional right for people outside of the US to seek asylum in the US.Asylum seekers are granted refugee status by the United Nations if they meet two broad requirements. The US accepts a limited number each year (notably more than any other country since WW2, however).

&gt; I&#x27;ve been seeing this fallacy a lot lately in these times. If you&#x27;re ever in this situation: the longer you&#x27;re held without a lawyer, the higher the liability on your captor becomes. Period. This is where million dollar lawsuits by the ACLU and jail time for corruption begins.This itself is actually the fallacy. Take a look at this:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;sections&#x2F;thetwo-way&#x2F;2017&#x2F;08&#x2F;01&#x2F;540903038&#x2F;u-s-citizen-held-by-immigration-for-3-years-denied-compensation-by-appeals-court" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.npr.org&#x2F;sections&#x2F;thetwo-way&#x2F;2017&#x2F;08&#x2F;01&#x2F;540903038...</a>&gt; Watson was correct all along: He was a U.S. citizen. After he was released, he filed a complaint. Last year, a district judge in New York awarded him $82,500 in damages, citing &quot;regrettable failures of the government.&quot;&gt; On Monday, an appeals court ruled that Watson, now 32, is not eligible for any of that money — because while his case is &quot;disturbing,&quot; the statute of limitations actually expired while he was still in ICE custody without a lawyer.

I&#x27;ve been seeing this fallacy a lot lately in these times. If you&#x27;re ever in this situation: the longer you&#x27;re held without a lawyer, the higher the liability on your captor becomes. Period. This is where million dollar lawsuits by the ACLU and jail time for corruption begins.The US was founded on habeas corpus, and it doesn&#x27;t matter what laws have been written since, or what national threats have been used as an excuse to undermine our inalienable rights. Your duty is to the future people of the US so that their rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness aren&#x27;t infringed.My feeling is that this house of cards of government officials skirting the law and pleading ignorance is going to come crashing down in the near future. They know that they are breaking the law. They&#x27;re just assuming that you will be afraid and let them.I had hoped that we were past all this and the 21st century would to be free of injustice, but unfortunately we&#x27;re all going to have to fight just like our ancestors did. But I think that better times really are just around the corner, as long as we stay informed and unified.Related: congresswoman Nanette Barragan questions Kirstjen Nielsen on asylum seekers being turned away at US border crossings:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=ZQ-cURrFLVk" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=ZQ-cURrFLVk</a>

Yeah, too bad the border control agents basically do what they want and this case means nothing.They&#x27;ll do the same thing, and someone will say &quot;But what about Alasaad v. McAleenan?&quot; and in the small windowless holding room the agent will say &quot;What about it? You want to leave, unlock your phone.&quot;

You mean pulling out of the various wars? Or the awesome economey? Or just the BS media?

I think you are preaching to the choir a bit, given the HN audience. I suspect that the continuous realtime monitoring that is done by private corporations is as bad or worse. Maybe you don&#x27;t win the war all at once but one battle at a time.

They let the border pigs keep all of the illegally and coercively stolen private information from the thousands or millions of phones they&#x27;ve already imaged (under the basis of &quot;it was believed to be legal at the time&quot;), so not really.Third-party doctrine lets them silently access your emails and IMs and texts at rest, and Section 702 as well as creative definitions of &quot;access&quot; let them sniff them all in transit. Privacy from the fed snoops is 100% an illusion; the entire population is under continuous realtime monitoring.This border search thing is an important but ultimately minor victory; total surveillance is the name of the game in the United States now, and likely will remain so until the country no longer exists.Strong encryption is the only defense we have against mass surveillance, but sadly most people don&#x27;t care enough about their own privacy (much less that of others - the classic &quot;What do you have to hide?&quot;) to demand it in communications products and services, so the majority of personal networked communications happens in ways that are extremely simple for the corrupt federal government to collect, analyze, and permanently store.

There is hope for the US, hard to believe with the current state of affairs.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Reasonable_suspicion" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Reasonable_suspicion</a>

What constitutes “reasonable suspicion” in this case?

&gt; A border officer searched plaintiff Zainab Merchant’s phone, despite her informing the officer that it contained privileged attorney-client communications.(The following (what I say) does not mean to imply that I don&#x27;t agree with the ruling:)I don&#x27;t get why this is a factor at all or even relevant. In particular the &#x27;despite her informing the officer&#x27;. Why would the officer be in a position to determine a) If the plaintiff is even an attorney to begin with b) If the plaintiff was asserting that as some kind of defacto &#x27;diplomatic immunity&#x27; (to only make a comparison) in order to prevent the phone from being searched because it might in fact contain contraband? Very convenient, right? Why in particular would the lawyers rights (because they are an attorney) be greater than any ordinary individual? Further why would it matter if an officer saw the attorney client information to begin with? The assumption is that anything they (the officer) sees would have to be kept private no matter what it was. Lastly could someone (a business person) then assert that there was material non public information on the phone and that as a reason to not search it? The point is if they did see it the officer could (in theory) trade on that information. Where does this stop?

A tiny bit of sanity returns to the US borders.Think I&#x27;ll give it a miss for now though. The entire border crew seems like a law onto themselves.e.g. last time - got hassled about being a dual citizen (neither US). But then while standing in a queue for a metal detector (as per agent instructions) another agent pulls me out of the queue and says I don&#x27;t need to do this go around there. Rest of epic long queue proceeds towards detector&#x2F;search as if nothing happened...just me.Very much doubt there is any rhyme or reason behind what&#x27;s happening at the borders beyond massive power trips.

The US has common law, so I believe this ruling becomes precedent unless it is overturned.

Hypothetically if it weren&#x27;t appealed would it be the final say?

It&#x27;s not even a circuit yet, this is a district court judgement. It is not a final say.

So as a practical matter, is it likely border officials will honor the ruling?

It is not necessarily the final say. DHS may turn around and challenge the ruling which may then be picked up by the Court of Appeals for further review. However, the Court of Appeals does not have to review the case and even if they did, they very well may agree with the ruling from the district court.

IANAL, but AFAIK attorneys can (and often do) cite a different court&#x27;s ruling as support for their argument but if the cited court is not above the current court and in the same &#x27;branch&#x27; of the tree, the current court isn&#x27;t bound by it.That&#x27;s why supreme court rulings are such a big deal. They are the ultimate &#x27;root&#x27; authority.

Aren&#x27;t rulings in one circuit often used as arguments in another circuit?Obviously it&#x27;s not the final word unless it comes from the Supreme Court.

IANAL, so can someone help me understand: How is this the final say if it&#x27;s out of a court in Boston? Isn&#x27;t that only one circuit?

The the authoritarians will simply move the goal post of what is suspicious.

IANAL, but I&#x27;m reading the opinion itself and I&#x27;ve found it pretty accessible so far.If you find this issue interesting, you may find reading at least part of it rewarding. The ACLU has a PDF embedded on this page: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.aclu.org&#x2F;legal-document&#x2F;alasaad-v-mcaleenan-opinion-summary-judgment" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.aclu.org&#x2F;legal-document&#x2F;alasaad-v-mcaleenan-opin...</a>Sections B-E (pages 14-47) are the most useful.

This was just a federal court, not the Supreme Court.

This didn&#x27;t go to the Supreme Court. A district court in Boston heard this case.

Just like how FISA courts have granted NSA access to whatever they want because “the person will never find out their privacy was violated, therefore it’s not that big of a deal”.This is what the Yahoo attorneys were told in one of the few partially declassified FISA court hearings by the judge when they tried to push back on a sweeping warrant, which I believe involved full emails&#x2F;information for not only a group of individuals but every person they talked to 2 hops, which quickly turns into thousands of people and companies.

Not exactly correct, the Supreme Court still has to accept the appeal onto its docket. Many of times, the Supreme Court will disregard the case and leave it to the lower courts to hash out.

There are many obvious cases that have made it to the Supreme Court. All it takes is a pig headed state or federal attorney general who insists on trying to uphold oppressive laws.

&gt;Your argument is poorly formed this was an extremely obvious case of reading the plain language of the law as already quoted.It&#x27;s not at all obvious. For example: it&#x27;s &quot;obvious&quot; that the constitution applies to the United States. Before you pass through the border, you are in a place that is NOT the United States. It&#x27;s definitely not obvious that the constitution applies to places outside the US.

&gt; Perhaps you would like to advance an actual argument&gt; insofar as abusing access to portable computing devices&gt; to virtually riffle through an individuals entire life&gt; without benefit of court or even articulable suspicion?You seem to think that I support a side I don&#x27;t. Cases like this don&#x27;t survive motions for summary judgement if the one side is completely implausible. This case either survived a motion for summary judgement, or the &quot;obvious&quot; side didn&#x27;t make such a motion.So if you think it is completely obvious, you should take it up with either the judge that denied the motion, or the lawyer who neglected to bring it.&gt; Lest we forgot Texas had to have the supreme court tell them that they couldn&#x27;t outlaw gay sex not that long ago.Any law that forbid it was unjust, and it should have been fixed long, long before Obergefell. But just because a law is unjust, doesn&#x27;t mean that it is unconstitutional on its face, (cf, civil asset forfeiture--manifestly unjust and currently legal in many circumstances) This is a mistake many court-watchers make.It is a very safe bet that a 1950&#x27;s court would have gone the other way on Obergefell, so on a plain language standard kind of fails. At some point, society gained a better understanding of what justice is and is not--and that is a great thing. But if the plain language didn&#x27;t change, then the appeal to plain language isn&#x27;t what gets us there. Rather, our understanding of justice did.

It is &quot;obvious&quot; only if you ignore centuries of customs practice and the word &quot;reasonable&quot; in the text. The 4th amendment protection from searches is not absolute.

Your argument is poorly formed this was an extremely obvious case of reading the plain language of the law as already quoted. Which court it arrived in isn&#x27;t proof positive of the complexity of the law. Its proof of how irrational and diseased our system of government is.Perhaps you would like to advance an actual argument insofar as abusing access to portable computing devices to virtually riffle through an individuals entire life without benefit of court or even articulable suspicion? This is an intrusion into an individuals privacy worse than anything the framers could have imagined justified only a by a right to search that exists to discover contraband THINGS not contraband thoughts.Lest we forgot Texas had to have the supreme court tell them that they couldn&#x27;t outlaw gay sex not that long ago.

I support this ruling very strongly, and am super-glad it went the way it did.But at the same time, if it were as obvious as just quoting the constituion, it wouldn&#x27;t have made it to the Supreme Court in the first place. The SC decides cases that are difficult, not cases that are easy.Again, I believe this is the right decision, but it was no layup.

Should&#x27;ve gone with your first instinct. They cannot arrest you for not unlocking your phone, but you will be denied entry, forever.

I&#x27;m not a lawyer, but afaik the Constitution protects equally citizens and not citizens

Does &quot;travellers&quot; include non-US citizens?

This is a District court. A nice victory, but hardly &quot;major&quot;.

We didn&#x27;t need a court to tell us the obvious, but this is nice to hear.

Reasonable suspicion<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Reasonable_suspicion" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Reasonable_suspicion</a>&gt;a legal standard of proof in United States law ... more than an &quot;inchoate and unparticularized suspicion or &#x27;hunch&#x27;&quot;; it must be based on &quot;specific and articulable facts&quot;, &quot;taken together with rational inferences from those facts&quot;, and the suspicion must be associated with the specific individual.

I&#x27;ve usually been fine crossing into the US via Canada as a Canadian, save for some cursory searches. However I don&#x27;t stand out visibly or audibly. On my second last trip through, I didn&#x27;t have a precise address that I was staying at on the other side of the country for a road trip, so I was taken aside. While waiting, I talked to a Canadian-German fella who had been molested for upwards of 4 hours on the basis of validating that he wasn&#x27;t intending to work in the U.S. Apparently they handed him a brochure that effectively said they can do anything they want with his data and so on upon that suspicion. Likewise, my gf made what I thought was a joke that at least we weren&#x27;t brown or something. At least, I thought it was a joke until I looked at the line up behind us.

Forgive my ignorance, but will this change anything at the border in the immediate term?

This is a US District Court ruling; I think it&#x27;s safe to say it&#x27;s going to be appealed and find its way to the USMC. It&#x27;s hard to imagine the executive branch of the federal government giving up all that power.

Constitutional aspect aside, it seems like such a pointless &#x2F; resource waste of an activity.   It seems highly unlikely to dig up much of any value.

How about letting foreigners change airplanes without treating them like they plan to visit or be illegal immigrants? Canada, UK, I&#x27;m looking at you guys too.Last time I changed airplanes in Canada: &quot;How long do you plan to stay in Canada?&quot; &quot;Well my flight leaves in three hours.&quot; &quot;Are you bringing any nuts or fruit in to Canada?&quot;

Next stop, how about letting a foreigner visit the US for a week without having their fingerprints taken.

How are they going to determine whether they have &quot;reasonable suspicion&quot;?

Drafting a law would be worse. Smartphones have only been around for 12 years, so no good law could have been passed because we did not fully understand how the smartphone would shake out.It took time because society needed to reckon with the newfound implications brought by such profound technological shifts.Freedom doesn&#x27;t come from a drive-thru window. You have to wait at the table until the issue has cooked.

It makes me really sad that it took a court case to decide this.

&quot;Evidence collected in breach of your constitutional rights&quot; is probably a better way of describing the situation.

I didn&#x27;t study law, but as far as I understand, illegal is not the right word here. They (govt) do things for which there is no legal precedence all the time. The court could also have found no problem with these searches. Now that they did take issue with it if the searches would continue then yes, that would be illegal.

So a govt agency does something illegal. To be honest, im not thrilled. They seem to be acting against the laws they claim to uphold all the time.Do they get punished? Are they put under extra monitoring now?This is not a democracy people, this is not &quot;trias politica&quot;. Police brutality rampant, this merely being one more case. These court rulings seem rather useless, when the same govt keeps illegal torture prisons (Guatanamo) open, where people&#x27;s lives are ruined without due process.

Looks like TSA&#x2F;Customs is about to get a lot more suspicious. All of these travellers, without exception, look shifty as hell.

He is far from being the only one to have this feeling. I once intended to even base my business there, but at this point I do not  want to have anything to do with this country. This is not lazy thinking, this is exactly the opposite. This is finally catching up with reality and moving beyond hollywood movies and the American dream propaganda.

And yet, in this very thread there are discussions, presumably by Americans, about whether human rights “afforded” to people only apply to citizens or all humans.They are literally arguing if “people” only means US citizens.

We are running concentration camps with 70000 children currently. We elected an almost-Nazi with routinely espoused almost-Nazi views who had a total information awareness intelligence apparatus at his fingertips. We have demonstrated legal facilities for &quot;enemy combatants&quot;, &quot;extraordinary rendition&quot;, offshore torture, treating an american citizen as a terrorist so they can be denied their constitutional rights.Most of that is from the Bush administration. The parent&#x27;s declaration would have been slightly paranoid in that regime, but with this one, it is arguably a bit mild. The statement should now be that no country should be dealing with the USA.The parent&#x27;s sentiment might have been somewhat outrageous

As a european who is not always very fond of the US, this is ridiculous, and lazy thinking.The amount of generalization and black and white simplifications to come up with such a thing is impressive though.

It&#x27;s more about American governance than anything else.

This is not about the US citizenry but about the state.If you can&#x27;t actually see how the American state (not population or country) has devolved into something to be concerned about over the last 20 years, perhaps you&#x27;re not looking hard enough.Domestic politics and policies are cruel and divisive, international policies have regressed dramatically (i.e. they&#x27;ve pulled out of major international treaties around arms and climate and trade).In the eyes of the average world citizen, America used to export an aspirational culture, now they export greed, cynicism, and technological dystopia (and I don&#x27;t mean Facebook, I mean mass surveillance and drone warfare).They are of course not alone in all this, but they are the biggest and most powerful country on the planet, so they lead by example, and it&#x27;s becoming a shittier example every year.So yeah, as an outsider looking into the US, I don&#x27;t find that comment mindless at all.

This comment is as mindless as the generalisation it&#x27;s applying to an entire population.

I found my time in China rather pleasant. However, I am aware of other less positive stories about traveling in China.

Middle East I can understand but what&#x27;s your beef with China?

Yes - on a personal level, I tend to avoid travelling to the US. For the same reasons that I avoid travelling to most of the Middle East or China.

You’re being downvoted for your “whataboutism”, being insulted and for comparing their mild comment to racism and hatred.

If you turn up in another country, sure, I have no problem interacting with you (assuming that you don&#x27;t support the policies of your state). If I travel to the US though, I&#x27;m just as powerless against the state as you are - in fact, even more so - and so I&#x27;ll avoid doing so.

I think most reasonable people know about North Korea, etc. That&#x27;s not a benchmark

But you realize that ordinary people don&#x27;t have a large choice in this right? We can vote and vote and vote, but until the majority wins, and helps facilitate change, we are stuck with how people perceive our country as well as some of the harsh realities of living here.I feel like you insulted me for the actions of my country. Isn&#x27;t this how racism and hate is spread? I&#x27;m now not worth knowing and should be shyed away from because of my country...Edit: I think the downvotes are a bit uncalled for. The OP said people should avoid the US because of its practices. The OP didn&#x27;t say ANY country with these practices, China, Middle East, North Korea, Russia. It was a very general statement that has is heavily opinion driven.

That whole attitude of being &quot;the greatest country in the world&quot; always seemed so peculiar to me. I get that all countries tend to be patriotic and embellish themselves but that just sounds a bit ridiculous and antagonistic. For a country established by immigrants and populated by immigrants, you&#x27;d think the national identity would be a bit more versatile.Instead, it&#x27;s been homogenized to the point where people have to fight their own perceptions to reclaim their culture and identity. It&#x27;s a shame, really.

Most of the points in this post are not accurate. There are more guns in civilian hands here than there are people.&quot;The Small Arms Survey stated that U.S. civilians alone account for 393 million (about 46 percent) of the worldwide total of civilian held firearms&quot; - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Gun_ownership" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Gun_ownership</a>&quot;Most of them are in the hands of well trained people who are harmless&quot; 
I am not sure what you base this on, you don&#x27;t need any training at all to buy a gun, just ~24 - 48 hour waiting period and if you have a concealed carry permit, you can generally walk out with the gun after paying. Depending on the state, training to carry a concealed weapon can take from 2 - 8 hours. Some states don&#x27;t even require training if you want to open carry your weapon.In 2010 there were ~20,000 suicides involving a gun. In 2016, there were 11,004 gun homicides. The US leads the world in mass shootings, especially in schools. Accidental gun injuries are most common in homes where guns are kept for self-defense.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Gun_violence_in_the_United_States" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Gun_violence_in_the_United_Sta...</a>Getting shot by the police is a leading cause of death in young male people of color.&quot;you might want to figure out who they are and what their agenda is&quot;Indeed.

I would say those concerns are not really big ones, at least not for me. The big ones are treatment of foreigners on state level in US - it is extremely xenophobic. You are literally a lesser human being and have some basic human rights revoked when not holding US passport, morality and sanity be damned.Imagine this kind of treatment for you if you travel for leisure or business. Would you ever, and I mean ever, want to have anything to do with such a place? People vote with their feet&#x2F;money.Anti-US forces really don&#x27;t have to try hard with propaganda. Heck, they don&#x27;t have to do anything. US is doing all this by itself, and thanks to internet those cases are not buried as easily as in the past.

I&#x27;m a US citizen. Most of his points are valid.Guns fucking everywhere is a problem. Lots of Americans think so. Yes, we absolutely execute people -- and our criminal justice system is a completely sham, especially if you&#x27;re not white and rich.Oh, and God save you from our health care economics.If I weren&#x27;t American, I&#x27;d absolutely never come here. In fact, I am American, and I&#x27;m actively researching ways to establish residency elsewhere.

As an American I read that as, &quot;we don&#x27;t have to change, and anyone who suggests we might is in on some conspiracy.&quot; Head out of the sand, my friend.You are right that the death penalty is rare. Rare as in very few developed countries allow it.Regarding guns, please stop to ask why our friends and neighbors need to carry a killing device to feel themselves.The US has its problems, but it has corrected many of them over time. (vide: slavery) This occurred when citizenry was not content to leave things where they are and dismiss criticism.

&gt; The US has its problems, but you have been listening to propaganda by anti US forces (you might want to figure out who they are and what their agenda is!)I think if you think these things are anti-US propaganda, I think you might want to examine the bias you have when you observe your own country.The death penalty may be rare but it&#x27;s something that shouldn&#x27;t exist, especially in a well-developed country and even moreso in a country that frequently proclaims itself the embodiment of freedom, democracy and liberty.Having grown up in a country that is very restrictive on gun ownership, I feel largely the same about civilian firearms.

&gt; Death penalty exists, but it is rare.As an American, this attitude drives me nuts. &quot;We don&#x27;t kill that many people, and heck most of them are even guilty!&quot;Regarding &quot;loaded guns exist, but they are not common.&quot; Again, this is the same attitude of &quot;Even though we have a mass shooting every week, all in all it&#x27;s not that much.&quot; Even if my chances of getting murdered in public are lower than, say, a car accident, the fact that we now teach preschoolers active shooter drills says something sad about our country.

Death penalty exists, but it is rare.Loaded guns exist, but they are not common. Most of them are in the hands of well trained people who are harmless unless (in the unlikely event) that deadly force is the only way they can get out of the situations.The US has its problems, but you have been listening to propaganda by anti US forces (you might want to figure out who they are and what their agenda is!) if you think either of the above issues are worth a worry.

As an American citizen, I&#x27;ve been trying to talk my family into leaving for years. Comments here reference the problem being the State and not the citizens. I beg to differ, the citizens in &quot;general America&quot; are dangerous and stupid to themselves and everyone around them. The entitled attitude of middle and upper middle class anyone is so unreasonable, I sometimes walk around the gang-tagged zones in my own neighborhood and think &quot;we&#x27;re a nation of trapped rats, we deserve this for the lies we keep repeating, we keep eating, we keep electing, and the most empty lie how we&#x27;re the greatest nation on earth, what a hoot!&quot;

He says while commenting on web site based in the USA

&gt; The vast majority of gun deaths are consentual (suicide),~2&#x2F;3 is a majority, but certainly not a vast majority.&gt; and don&#x27;t flagrantly disobey police officers, and I guarantee you&#x27;ll be completely fine.Plenty of people are shot by police without flagrantly disobeying police orders. It may reduce your risk, but it does not eliminate it.&gt; If you disagree with all this, it&#x27;s probably just not the country for you. You make a good decision staying out.As a country founded on pluralism, The USA has plenty of room and hospitality to offer those who disagree with you.

My sentiment exactly! To me, the essence of America is captured in the New Hampshire state motto: &quot;Live free or die&quot;.There are some people who don&#x27;t vibe with this sort of philosophy. But thank God the USA exists for those of us that do!

If the guns were removed, you&#x27;d be more safe, as if there are no guns your chance of shooting goes down from &quot;very rare&quot; to 0.

As an American, I&#x27;m lovin&#x27; it! Guns are everywhere, yet shootings are very rare. I feel very safe knowing I and others around me all want and enjoy safety, and we have strong law enforcement to keep it that way.(Although I agree that our 4th amendment has been horrifically raped in modern times.)The vast majority of gun deaths are consentual (suicide), and of the homicidal remainder, the vast majority are within organized crime. Stay away from gang activity and don&#x27;t flagrantly disobey police officers, and I guarantee you&#x27;ll be completely fine.If you disagree with all this, it&#x27;s probably just not the country for you. You make a good decision staying out.

I&#x27;m always amazed by how few shooting fatalities there are in the US. 330M population, 33K gun deaths per annum [1]. And two thirds of the gun deaths are suicides. So that&#x27;s only 10K homicides per annum. That&#x27;s 1 in 33K. In the UK we have 65M population, and 800 murders per annum. That&#x27;s 1 in 81K. Given that the US is so heavily armed I&#x27;d expect the gun death rate to be much higher. IMHO that demonstrates that the average person is equal to the responsibility of firearm ownership.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Gun_violence_in_the_United_States" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Gun_violence_in_the_United_Sta...</a>

According this article (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;us-gun-death-murder-risk-statistics-2018-3" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.businessinsider.com&#x2F;us-gun-death-murder-risk-sta...</a>) your chances of dying from a motor vehicle incident is approximately three times higher than dying from a gun assault.

You bring up a good point.  Traffic fatalities in general are are a HUGE problem in the US, not just alcohol-related, and they&#x27;re mostly due to poor civil engineering. Another abject failure of US governance.

I don&#x27;t understand why people always discount suicides among gun deaths, as if suicides only happen to &quot;other people&quot;.It&#x27;s true that you can limit your gun risk by being white&#x2F;urban&#x2F;middle-class&#x2F;mentally healthy, but these are not advantages available to everyone. There&#x27;s a lot of victim-blaming in some of these comments, which glosses over the fact that plenty of infants and toddlers die from guns.Gun deaths in total numbers are roughly the same as car deaths: each are approx 30-40K per year in the USA.

You are far more likely to be killed by a drunk driver in the US than by a gun. Your chances of being killed by a gun are basically zero (unless you are travelling to the US specifically to commit suicide), so that&#x27;s a somewhat bogus concern

&gt; a general attitude of being the masters of the worldSounds like you don&#x27;t appreciate the regional and resource stability that the US military brings to your country. You probably just take it for granted that cargo ships can travel freely and trade without worry of being attacked. Global trade wasn&#x27;t this risk-free before the US navy became &quot;masters of the world&quot;.Maybe we need to dissolve NATO then because clearly the EU does not see defense as a priority and puts little to no effort protecting its interests since the US takes care of it. I vote the US pull out of NATO and stop being &quot;masters of the world&quot; in the middle east, protecting shipping lanes with the navy, etc. EU can protect its own interests with its own defense budget. Good luck.

ironically, Hawaii has no death penalty and extremely restrictive gun laws. it&#x27;s a big country!

And worse - no proper support for Metric!

To meet lovely people doing horrific things, live in one of the (not poor) DC Metro Area neighborhoods.

What surprises me the most is the huge divide between these horrific things that happen at government level and the fact that 99% of Americans I met were instead very lovely people.

&gt; Best thing is to just not have anything to do with the US of A.The US is about 4% of the world population. The rest of the world about 96%.(Google for &quot;US population&quot; and &quot;world population&quot;, use mathematical process known as division.)

There are 16 countries rated higher on the &quot;human freedom index&quot;:
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;object.cato.org&#x2F;sites&#x2F;cato.org&#x2F;files&#x2F;human-freedom-index-files&#x2F;human-freedom-index-2018-revised.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;object.cato.org&#x2F;sites&#x2F;cato.org&#x2F;files&#x2F;human-freedom-i...</a>I assume you won&#x27;t travel to Sweden, they have the same score as the US :)Don&#x27;t get me wrong, I also frustrated the US doesn&#x27;t so better -- not because the US is that bad, but because it would be so easy for the US to do better.And for some reason I emphasize with the Americans :)
(I live in Denmark, but I&#x27;m not scared of traveling to neither Sweden or the US -- but I&#x27;ve never been to a non-democratic country, no plans to either).

Oh come on now. In Australia you can be detained without charge and all they have to do is mention the &#x27;t&#x27; word. I also had someone turn up to our tabletop session on the weekend saying trains had stopped because someone got shot outside the station, while I struggle to get a license for a muzzle loading antique flintlock rifle. Not to mention I can get fined for all matter of stupid stuff because of the nanny state.The US isn&#x27;t perfect, but of all the places in the world you could live it&#x27;s undeniably one of the best. Probably second only to Germany in my favourite places to travel, tbh

Why are you on hackernews, a USA website &#x2F; company?

Best thing is to just not have anything to do with the US of A.  Death penalty, loaded guns everywhere, a general attitude of being the masters of the world which leads to things like suspicionless searches.  No, thanks.  I think the best would be if more people would actually stop dealing with the USA.  Its becoming a trend.  I once turned down an invitation to a conference in Hawai, and guess what, I was not alone.

Court: Suspicionless Searches of Travelers’ Phones and Laptops Unconstitutional