Yeah I didn't do a great job of expressing myself. Here's another try: the list [U.S., China] implies the U.S. does a really profoundly terrible job of protecting your rights to privacy (in the U.S., a prohibition of unreasonable search and seizure) because China is dystopian-abysmal on this scale. When, in fact, the U.S. does a pretty good job especially in comparison to other developed Western nations: you can absolutely refuse a search when the police show up, and indeed you should unless YOU called them. Their tactics include trying to make it seem like you don't have a choice, but you do. Many other developed nations are much worse in this regard (the U.K. and Australia are particularly bad). But I was thinking of France, personally. It's hard to imagine French people refusing to help the police because, as far as I know, you really can't and you have to answer their questions.

This ruling in the 5th Circuit (so it only applies to the 5th Circuit?) is bad and reduces the U.S.'s standing with regard to how strongly it protects you against unreasonable search and seizure, but the U.S. still does a pretty good job overall. The 100-mile thing is, in practice, not a thing for U.S. citizens in the U.S. It's still very bad. But the border police aren't the people seizing and searching your phone if you're already in the U.S., it's the local police or the FBI and they have to get a warrant.

It's a similar situation with strong protections of other rights, like the right to free speech. Denmark is considering making public Koran burning illegal, for instance, or the right to peaceably assemble / protest, which the U.K. just got rid of. Part of it is the very concept of "rights" as instantiated in the U.S. Constitution.

>Oh right, so this doesn't apply to people who the advice was addressed to. You were just having a nationalistic knee-jerk reaction. Good to know.

The notable part of the article to ME was that the border police can search returning Americans' phones without a warrant. I think the default situation in developed countries is that if you're a foreigner trying to get in the police can search you without a warrant, and maybe that includes phones? It's a shitty situation, but that's how it is.

As it turns out, I have a passport from somewhere other than the U.S. :-)