UNITED STATES.- The U.S. District Court has ruled that the search of a traveling businessman's laptop at the California border by the government was unreasonable, a violation of his privacy, and therefore unconstitutional. Judge Amy Berman Jackson's ruling was a rebuke of the Obama administrations treatment of laptops as containers that can be searched without a warrant and without time limits to protect national security as opposed to personal effects and papers which are protected by the Fourth Amendment against unreasonable search and seizure.

The federal government argued that South Korean businessman Jae Shik Kim was conspiring to sell aircraft technology to Iran, and seized his computer at the California border in order to gather evidence to prove the suspicion of arms control violations. The current administration has maintained that people crossing into the U.S. are not protected by the Fourth Amendment against unreasonable search and seizure and has a policy of allowing intrusive searches to prevent drugs, child pornography, and other illegal imports from entering the country.

In 2013, the Department of Homeland Security issued a Civil Rights/Civil Liberties Impact Assessment on border searches of electronic devices where it stated that the "overall authority to conduct border searches without suspicion or warrant is clear and long-standing, and courts have not treated searches of electronic devices any differently than searches of other objects." The assessment stated that "imposing a requirement that officers have reasonable suspicion in order to conduct a border search of an electronic device would be operationally harmful" and would not produce any related civil rights benefits.

However, the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups have argued that the policy has been used to build criminal cases against individuals when the government can not demonstrate enough probable cause to obtain a warrant, and to target travelers for things like political advocacy. In one case, a young computer programmer named David House sued the government for taking and copying the contents of his laptop, thumb drive and cellphone at the border after vacationing with his girlfriend in Mexico. House was an associate of Army Private Chelsea Manning (AKA Bradley Manning), who has been convicted with leaking classified information. The government later acknowledged that House had not committed a crime and, as part of a 2013 legal settlement, promised to destroy copies of his personal data obtained in the search.

Court rulings have not been cut and dry on the subject. In 2013, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the government should have reasonable suspicion before conducting a comprehensive search of an electronic device. But that ruling only applies to the nine Western states (including California) and Guam that fall under that court's jurisdiction, leaving questions about what constitutes a comprehensive search and whether this same reasoning would apply in other states.

Later that same year, a judge at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York ruled in favor of laptop searches at the border, saying they were so rare that citizens weren't at risk of being violated.

In the latest ruling, the Judge ruled that the search of Kim's laptop clearly went beyond a routine border inspection because it involved transporting the computer 150 miles from the airport and holding it indefinitely so officials could copy and review its content. "After hearing all of the facts, the court cannot help but ask itself whether the examination in this case can accurately be characterized as a border search at all. And if not, it surely cannot be justified by the concerns underlying the border search doctrine," Jackson wrote.

Officials at the Justice Department declined comment and with the Department of Homeland Security have not commented on the ruling.

*Information from The Associated Press.

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