In an op-ed for Bloomberg, Noah Feldman argues why the exception to Fourth Amendment privacy rights allowing for law enforcement searches near the borders needs revamping. “There is indeed a long-standing tradition that the government can search you and your belongings at the border to look for contraband,” writes Feldman. “But in an era when electronic files cross borders constantly and instantaneously, it makes no sense to allow the government to search phones or computers at the border.” Feldman believes action needs to be taken to rework the outdated rule. “The lesson from all this isn’t just that you approach a border at your own risk,” Feldman writes. “It’s that major exceptions to our basic liberties should be interpreted narrowly, not broadly. Searching a reporter’s phone or anyone’s data isn’t within the government’s plausible set of purposes.”
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