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Comment by TheCoelacanth | Hacker News Reader

> While the Supreme Court has long recognized a border-search exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement, it applies to only two interests: promoting the duty regime and preventing contraband from entering the country; and ensuring that individuals are legally admitted.

The only reasons allowed for border searches are ensuring that individuals are legally admitted (inapplicable here because citizens are always legally entitled to enter) and preventing contraband from entering.

A wiped phone can't contain contraband, so wiping the phone serves the same purpose as a search. It's not destroying evidence anymore than throwing away a water bottle before going through TSA is destroying evidence.

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> A wiped phone can't contain contraband, so wiping the phone serves the same purpose as a search.

While this is the most compelling argument I've seen surrounding this case and this specific context, the initial attempt to enter with the contraband is likely a crime on its own - partial entry has already happened, the acts in question happened on US soil.

Imagine applying the same concept to drugs (and "body is a container" was found unconstitutional long ago, so no need to opine there) - if you're subject to a search and you eat drugs, does that somehow absolve you of the original attempt to smuggle?

> A wiped phone can't contain contraband

There is no requirement that evidence is "contraband".

As other comments have said, the courts aren't autistic. They don't fall for filly semantic games.

In general, there is not. For the border search exemption to allow a warrantless search of a citizen, the only legitimate grounds are preventing countraband from entering the country.

this is a nonsense statement. yes, unfortunately format logic is wholly inadequate to express what we need in the creation and application of laws. so yes, fuzzy issues about the intent of the law and the intent of the accused some into play, along with a healthy schmear of cultural norms.

but to say that the laws and precedence aren't largely concerned with building some semantic context, and that lawyers don't build chains of reasoning in that framework to prophet their positions is absolute nonsense.

you're positing a world where a judge just rules entirely on feels, and I think most judges would be quite offended by that notion.

Sure lawyers rely on semantics. But I said “silly semantics”.

Claiming that destroying evidence of a crime proves no crime was committed is the logic of a 1 year old who thinks the world disappears when they close their eyes.

A lawyer can go into court and argue semantics around the edges but isn’t going to get very far using semantics to argue destroying evidence also erases a crime.

The border search exemption can't be used for general purpose law enforcement; only for determining if the person should be allowed to enter the country (inapplicable to citizens) and for preventing countraband from entering the country.

A wiped phone cannot contain contraband data, so the border search exemption cannot apply.

this seems like a very similar situation to people charged with only a single count of 'resisting arrest'

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