Comment by IgorPartola | Hacker News Reader

Comment by IgorPartola | Hacker News Reader

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I guess I don't get the distinction in the comparison. Let me lay out a simple example:

a. I hold a picture on my mobile phone. I transmit this picture using the phone's built in radio to a friend of mine.

b. I hold a picture on my laptop. I transmit the picture to a friend using my internet connection provided by my ISP.

I get that the government cannot access my phone and pull the picture from it (that would be a warrantless search of both my person and my effects). However, once I send the picture into the world, why does it matter whether I used an undersea cable or a communication satellite or a carrier pidgin? If the Supreme Court rules that neither my phone nor any communication to/from it may be searched without a warrant, then it should follow almost immediately that the same rules should apply to any consumer communication device, no?

Edit: in both cases above, let's assume that my friend is not a US citizen and is not located in the US.

I think one of the main distinctions that people fail to make in this discussion is that in these cases, the evidence of the warrantless search was entered against them in a court of law. They needed a warrant to view the phone data and then to use that as evidence against you, in this case they said the search was illegal so all fruit of the poisonous tree could not be introduced at trial. While I disagree with what the nsa is doing, they are not using the evidence obtained illegally against you, granted you do have the right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures, which was one of the main complaints back in colonial days wrt general writs, which is why that language is there. They are two different things, one is the right be to free of unreasonable searches (nsa), and another related to the use of evidence you had on you at time of arrest being searched as part of you being taken in to custody.

> While I disagree with what the nsa is doing, they are not using the evidence obtained illegally against you

Except they did, by passing it to other agencies and then falsifying their chain of investigation through "parallel construction".

The government cannot legally access this picture either without a warrant.

Unless you're crossing the no-rights zone otherwise known as the border.

No, the "no rights zone" only applies to non-USPERs outside of U.S. soil. NSA might reasonably be able to claim that they didn't know a given email address used outside the U.S. actually belongs to a U.S. person, but they'd have a much harder argument claiming that a phone issued to a U.S. area code didn't reasonably belong to a U.S. person, even if used overseas.

He meant that the border police can search you, your car, your phone, without a warrant, as long as you are within a radius of 100 miles from the border. That's named the 'constitution free zone'

> as long as you are within a radius of 100 miles from the border.

The rule is more nuanced than that. Until you cross all border control points then you can still be searches as if you were crossing a border. The rule you're talking about is that these border control points can be within 100 miles from the border to allow for efficiency of operation of border controls. Imagine if literally every border crossing to Canada had to have a dedicated CBP outpost manned every hour that the road itself is open.

That is false. Border Patrol claims the right to enter private property and homes of citizens without a warrant within 100 miles of the border.

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