Equivalent to a ‘stop and frisk?’
The Fourth Circuit Says Border Agents Can Search Your Phone By Hand, No Suspicion Required
Legal intern Suzanne Castillo was the principal author of this post by Sophia Cope on EFF:
The Fourth Circuit issued a disappointing opinion in U.S. v. Belmonte Cardozo, a case in which EFF filed an amicus brief, alongside the national ACLU, its Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia affiliates, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL).
We argued that electronic device searches at the border should require a warrant based on probable cause, but at minimum, regardless of whether an officer searches by hand or with forensic software that plugs into a device and downloads its entire contents for search, the same Fourth Amendment standard should apply to all device searches at the border.
Unfortunately, the court rejected that argument and ruled that a lower standard applies to manual searches, allowing the government to conduct extraordinarily invasive electronic device searches without any suspicion of wrongdoing, simply because the border officer chooses to search by hand rather than with a forensic tool.
Read more at EFF.
(Related)
US accuses American of allegedly wiping his phone using a ‘duress’ password during border search
Zack Whittaker reports:
The U.S. Justice Department is prosecuting an American for allegedly providing U.S. border authorities with a passcode that wiped the contents of his phone, according to an indictment and media reports.
This is thought to be the first known case in the United States where federal prosecutors have charged someone for the alleged destruction of data using a “duress” password built into a phone’s software.
According to The Guardian, which covered the story earlier this week following the court’s first hearing on Monday, Atlanta resident Samuel Tunick is fighting the charges. Tunick’s attorneys said that it was unlawful for U.S. Customs and Border Protection to seize his phone as he arrived back in the U.S. last year and that any evidence — including the alleged wiping of his phone — should be thrown out.
Read more at TechCrunch.
The case is USA v. Tunick, 1:25-cr-00499-ELR-CCB-1 Media coverage reports the incident occurred January 24, 2025, but the court docket indicates that the case was filed November 13, 2025. Now that the evidentiary hearing was held on July 20 on the motion to suppress evidence, the Court left the hearing open for the purpose of supplementing Mr. Kane’s testimony. It is not clear from the docket who Mr. Kane is. The Court set the following briefing schedule: Tunick’s opening post-hearing brief shall be due September 18, 2026, the Government’s response shall be due October 9, 2023, and Tunick’s reply shall be due October 23, 2026. Exhibits retained to be forwarded to the Clerks Office.
Universities don’t trust students to use AI appropriately and they fail to do so themselves…
https://www.ft.com/content/49304b1e-8a9d-4fb6-bc4d-37dd3430bb98?syn-25a6b1a6=1
Universities drop AI detection tools over fears about accuracy
When Orion Newby, an Adelphi University student, was wrongly accused of violating academic integrity by using AI to generate an essay, he faced a long battle to clear his name.
In January this year, a New York court ruled in his favour. The judgment recorded that while the Turnitin AI detection tool used by the university had delivered an “AI-generated score of 100 per cent”, Newby had submitted evidence from other AI detection tools purporting to show a zero per cent chance of AI-generated content, but the university upheld the misconduct finding. The court found that the university had failed to follow its own disciplinary procedures and had denied Newby a meaningful appeal.
… Other criticisms include that the detection tools disproportionately deliver false positive results to non-native English speakers, as a widely cited 2023 Stanford study shows.
