9th Circuit Considers Border Computer Search
A federal appeals court appears poised to rule that a computer has no special protection from searches at the border.
The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is expected to rule in the case of Michael T. Arnold, who is seeking to throw out evidence of child pornography found by a customs officer who clicked on folders called “Kodak pictures” and “Kodak memories,” Adam Liptak writes in his column for the New York Times.
The panel judges who heard the case in October appeared to favor arguments that computers deserve no special protection from border searches, the article says. U.S. District Judge Dean Pregerson ruled earlier that the evidence should be suppressed, and he is the only judge to take that position in a border computer-search case.
In 2005, the Richmond, Va.-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in a similar case upheld the conviction of a man who crossed the Canadian border with child porn on his computer.
But in another case, a government agent found child porn on a computer with assistance from the computer’s owner, but the feds were unable to open the files after they seized the computer, Liptak writes. The government demanded a password.
A federal magistrate judge quashed the subpoena in November, saying it would violate the defendant’s Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.
