The harassment is targeted at critics & opponents of the current regime. The message is very clear: Be afraid of us. Be very afraid
There are 33 days remaining until election day. Vote out all the incumbents.
[1] https://www.help.cbp.gov/s/article/Article-1253?language=en_...
[2] https://www.southernborder.org/100_mile_border_enforcement_z...
>Border Patrol checkpoints do not give Border Patrol Agents carte blanche to automatically search persons and their vehicles, other than in the manner described above. To conduct a legal search under the Fourth Amendment, the agents must develop particularly probable cause to conduct a lawful search. Probable cause can be developed from agent observations, records checks, non-intrusive canine sniffs, and other established means. Motorist's may consent to a search but are not required to do so.
I'm sure that "other established means" are a very restrictive requirement if they fail to have an "observation."
Sure, they can lie about probable cause, but they would then have that evidence thrown out in any case that derived from the search. Similarly, I can kick in your door and search your house and your only recourse is violence or the legal system. The whole question here is not whether a search is possible, but whether there is any legal consequences of it.
In the UK, HMRC can search your house without a warrant if they have 'reasonable suspicion' that goods that are 'liable to forfeiture' are likely to be moved or destroyed. See Customs and Excise Management Act 1979, section 161. Anything seized can be used against you in court. In 2014, HMRC described this power as 'frequently used'.[0] CBP doesn't have that power and it's unthinkable they'd be given it.
Why is the far more limited CBP power (which it shares with almost every border force in the world) mentioned here every 2 weeks or so, while HMRC's very broad power to search your house is ignored?
[0] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7e1bbae5274...
But then again we don't fear police and ICE shooting us dead and our government wasn't subject to a coup in 2021, so there is that. Swings and roundabouts
If you vote out all the incumbents then you encourage them to ignore you. You will vote against them whether they support, ignore, or oppose what you want. Also, removing the people who agree with you makes it harder to form a majority for your cause.
There are some instances where powers need to be exercised in a hurry, but there should always be proper reporting and a paper trail, with stiff reprimanded for misuse or abuse of the system. Accidents can happen, but they should be infrequent and should follow protocol.
It would be great if citizens had more direct involvement in these cases too. I don't see why egregious abuses shouldn't be tried by jury.
Police and intelligence agency employees should be held to a higher standard than civilians (like military personnel are subject to UCMJ), and breeches of protocols should lead to harsher punishments imposed upon them. It would be fine to pay them more if it required more training and accountability.
Police officers are 30x more likely to be murdered in the US South than in, say, Germany.
> "From 2014 through 2023, the South region had the most line-of-duty deaths yearly compared to other regions. There was a 38% decrease in line-of-duty deaths in the region in 2023 (20 deaths) compared to 2022 (32 deaths). Last year marked the lowest number of line-of-duty deaths in the South since 2015 (19 deaths)."
https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/fbi-releases-officer...
Felonious Deaths vs Accidental Deaths
https://le.fbi.gov/cjis-division/cjis-link/statistics-on-law...
> "A look at police crime statistics shows that fatal attacks on police officers are relatively rare. While violent acts against police officers are increasing overall—last year the statistics recorded 38,960 cases, a rise of 0.8 percent—no more than two police officers have been killed in the line of duty in any year since 2011." (Translated)
Also, right to have a gun should involve right to not be shot by a cop just because you own a gun.
The people who would charge the officers are the same people who rely on the police to provide evidence. Both groups work closely together. Malfeasance by police typically provides the prosecution with evidence they want or people to charge. There’s no incentive other than morality to charge them, and a lot of reasons to find a way to rationalize it as untrue, or necessary, or whatever.
Those terms need to be clearly defined. SCOTUS has declared that the police actually have no duty to protect and to serve the people.
And with an overwhelming amount of evidence, the police operate with effectively no accountability and repeated demonstrate that they abuse their powers freely.
So yes, laws without teeth are pointless but the state's monopoly on violence should only be granted when it can be demonstrated to not be abused.
The question is whether the people who control the police are subject to democratic processes. They are not. We live in an oligarchy whose control over the government is exercised through two small private clubs who have written themselves into the law. To which it has been decided that infinite money can be donated, that money given without explicit quid pro quo is simply a gift, and that money given after something has been done is simply a "gratuity."*
It's an evil country, and the most lucrative middle-class profession is to generate daily the vocabulary to justify its evil acts.
I can tell you who doesn't ever get searched at the border. In fact, I bet you could tell me. Peter Thiel doesn't get searched at the border. Kamala Harris doesn't get searched at the border. Jeffrey Epstein never got searched at the border. Tom Cruise doesn't get searched at the border.
And yet, almost every single time such practices are implemented, nothing about actual safety changes...but a whole lot about surveillance does.
"People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security will lose both.
-- Benajmin Franklin, paraphrased
El Salvador. Case closed.
"Mama! Poo-poo!"
— Adolf Hitler, as a toddler
Asking whether or not something is new or how frequently it's been done in the past isn't saying it's acceptable nor does it put them on the side of tyranny. In fact, a sign of tyranny would be a significant uptick in the number of these searches, and how else would you be able to see that worrying signal without answering the question they asked?
The quote is actually “the best time to plant a tree was 30 years ago. The second best time is today”
29 years ago, 28 years ago … all better than today. There are an infinite number of times better (and worse) than today.
How was this question:
> I think basically every country exercises this power
Their impression was that it wasn't and that other countries do similar things. Stating your understanding of a situation helps guide discussion and helps people answer your inquiries. Doing that should be encouraged, not somehow treated as an endorsement of tyranny.
Was anyone ever refused entry because they had an image poking fun at Kamala Harris? There, your question has been answered.
It’s disingenuous to imply that November will have an effect on either of those topics.
It’s been a thing since 1789: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception
The fact that barely any consequences came for those instigating the putsch, except a few of those dumb enough to do stuff like parade around in front of cameras, is completely inexcusable.
I'm not aware of this being a widespread practice at anti-Trump rallies.
> Do they need to subpoena ~400 lawmakers and $10 donors to the campaign? I think it’s obvious that that is overreach and intimidation.
Well... it's not unlikely that there might have been "inside help" from lawmakers and/or their staff or even general Congressional staff. The purpose of an investigation is to go, dig deep and fully take apart whatever conspiracy there was.
As for the donors - anti-terrorist laws in pretty much every country don't care if it was just a $10 donation. Donate to a cause that ends up being terrorists, be labeled as a terrorism supporter.
[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/16/us/politics/jan-6-gallows...
Do you think at that point he had it out for Republicans in general? Republican congressmen were appalled by what happened on Jan 6th, and it was only because they thought Trump would just go away that he wasn't convicted in the Senate.
Trying to frame that investigation as some sort of political witch hunt is ridiculous.
I get what you’re saying and agree. But if there is no statistically significant jump in the number from historical data for previous administrations then I can conclude that the reporting is politically motivated.
The issue now is that my entire life is literally on my phone.
The issue now is that there is a 100-mile ‘border search exception’ in place. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception
Now, within 100 miles of the border, should CBP choose to, they can search me without a warrant and search everything in my phone, and even retain it if they’d like. If I want to challenge that, I need tens of thousands of dollars and time.
This is the very definition of an unreasonable search; but to change that we have to change the politicians and change the judiciary. It’s up to us, but until we get it changed, we may as well consider the 4th amendment a dead letter, and that means trouble for all of us.
The map also does not show Hawai'i, which would be one green blob, there is no part of Hawai'i not 100 miles from the border. All of the New England states are similarly small enough to be completely covered, even by the erroneous picture of the physical border.
You basically get a few, mostly uninhabited spots out in the West that aren't covered.
Or, maybe it might help to stop putting our entire lives on our phones.
If a border patrol agent coerces access to my phone, they're not going to find much. A few default apps, Lyft, an a music player. They're not going to find any social media, any photo album full of personal pictures, any banking apps or really anything that helps them understand what kind of person I am. I'm not going to like them going through it, but the blast radius is limited.
And that's me, a regular Joe, not wanted by Interpol. If you're at high risk, you should already have normalized this "app minimalism" mentality.
People SHOULD be allowed to put their entire lives on phones if they want to.
People SHOULD NOT have to worry about governments using that against them.
However:
> The issue now is that my entire life is literally on my phone.
Is something you should fix. And not because of border searches.
I do most online stuff from a PC.
The USA is definitely not thevonly one. Great Britain has also an extensive history of tyranical privacy-violating border crossing.
As is Israel and Russia.
The point is, the deeper you look, the better you understand how wide-spread the practice is.
There's a much simpler advice:
"Don't."
For some reason, HN commenters constantly struggle with this (simple) concept.
During the last quarter of century, in many hundreds of border controls through many countries of Europe and Asia, including in places with tight security like Israel, I have never seen any case of searching for information in any belongings of the travelers, like computers or smartphones or even notebooks or the like.
Israel is a country that long before 9/11 had extremely effective methods for testing travelers at border control, and unlike the Americans they kept their methods unchanged after 9/11. Unlike USA, they have never relied on technical means, like X-ray scanners or SSD/HDD searching, but they have relied on trained humans who interviewed the travelers and assessed whether they lie about their purpose or not.
"I have never seen" is very different from "it doesn't happen".
I'm pretty sure in many countries, border control agents do their worst stuff out of sight of the public.
That's a good one :) It shows a couple things, like:
• a certain independence from Uncle Sam (like they displayed when they bombed the USS Liberty in 1967)
• that their own population was already sufficiently propagandized into paranoia mode (fear and loathing of “evil muslims”) in order to never make peace and keep the hate up
• and of course that they knew there was nothing to worry about wrt the 9/11 hoax
Fiscal Year | Device Searches | Travelers at POEs | Rate | Equivalent
------------|-----------------|--------------------|------------|------------
2012 | 5,085 | 351.6M | 0.00145% | 1 in 69,200
2013 | 5,709 | 362.3M | 0.00158% | 1 in 63,500
2014 | 6,029 | 375.0M | 0.00161% | 1 in 62,200
2015 | 8,503 | 383.2M | 0.00222% | 1 in 45,100
2016 | 19,033 | 390.6M | 0.00487% | 1 in 20,500
2017 | 30,200 | 397.4M | 0.00760% | 1 in 13,200
2018 | 33,296 | 413.9M | 0.00804% | 1 in 12,400
2019 | 40,913 | 410.3M | 0.00997% | 1 in 10,000
2020 | 32,038 | ~238M | 0.0135% | 1 in 7,420
2021 | 37,450 | ~179M | 0.0209% | 1 in 4,780
2022 | 45,499 | ~316.7M | 0.0144% | 1 in 6,960
2023 | 41,767 | >394M | ~0.0106% | ~1 in 9,440
2024 | 47,047 | >420M | ~0.0112% | ~1 in 8,940
2025 | 55,318 | >419M | ~0.0132% | ~1 in 7,570
These stats aren't also capturing who gets stopped and why, which is pretty important, especially given the current government.
What about having UN observers on the ground to ensure fair elections, like the countries this administration is so found of?
Some states had quite a deep dive, forensic audits, the whole thing. https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-wisconsin-presidential-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021_Maricopa_County_president...
The 2020 election was probably the most scrutinized in history. How is that not being able to question a fair election?
Even if Dems take the House and Senate, this can't be called a fair election.
The precedent, if anything, is that we will tolerate people upending the whole public discourse and portions of the government for years over nonsense that never had any evidence of anything occurring on a level that would impact the elections.
Meanwhile, Trump has spent the entire administration trying to restrict the ability for demographics that won't vote for him from being able to vote. Openly. Sometimes honestly, but mostly also blaming all of it on the election he lost and claiming it's to stop the voter fraud that never actually occurred.
The precedent that was set is that questioning the election can become dogma for a political party no matter if there is absolutely zero evidence of what they are saying happened.
A more honest way of interpreting that data is: "even if you are a vocal critic of the current regime, it's extremely unlikely anyone will ever search your phone at the border."
It is worth pointing out that both when you enter a prison and when you enter a country, you are subject to getting searched. My parents now avoid traveling through the UK because they have been searched even though they are just transiting through the airport.
Good luck with that vote.
which is to say - you sure can vote. but if you really want to do something, there's plenty of local hacktivist groups around doing things like logging ALPRs to maps, attending townhalls to yell at pro-surveillance councilmembers and the like
my experience with those groups is that anybody who's remotely tech savvy and/or a spreadsheet whiz is a godsend. I was one of two people in a 30+ person group who knew how to, for eg, set up breakout rooms, keep virtual attendees engaged, automate email sends, etc. if there's one thing movement organizers are generally bad at it's knowing how to use the technical tools to actually stay organized
you can also be the person who gets them to move off of Google and onto at-least Proton (though ideally something like Cryptpad). anybody with a halfway-competent understanding of OpSec could've prevented a lot of the things that led to the doxxing of individuals and people leaving the movement due to harassment
The "side A is worse" or "side B is worse" only condemns one, and bends over for the other.
Voting increasingly less corrupt options(as good as we can judge) is the way. What else can you do?
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/05/federal-judge-makes-hi...
But sure it's the current administration what pushed this so far beyond. Beyond 40k phones into 50k phones!
Has the % of people searched actually decreased?
I don't trust the current U.S. gov (or any U.S. gov, really), but the figure isn't actually increasing in a significant way. The US. remain as unwelcoming to visitors as they have been since 2001. Nothing to see in this report.
Strangely the stats don't back your assertion. Wouldn't being "unwelcoming since 2001" result in a decrease in travel?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tourism_in_the_United_States#V...
Between 1995 and 2015 (capturing data before and after 2001) the US's change in tourism increased at a faster rate than France, Italy, Greece, Germany, Austria, and the UK. Spain may have increased at a slightly faster pace, but it's close.
Anyways, let's compare to more "welcoming" places. This shows the slope of the data, so it's pretty easy to compare the changes between countries.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/international-tourist-tri...
If you have data that shows otherwise, feel free to share it.
https://www.propublica.org/article/caught-in-crackdown-ice-c...
Well, not for pro-themselves ones at least.
And a bonus: * This is not a new thing, a is related to why people occasionally talk about "the swamp"/the "deep state"/"3 letter agencies". NSA has self interest to stay alive regardless of admin.
And this aspect (of "some parts of the govt aren't really affected by the elected reps) isn't a new thing at all either - see: Yes (Prime) Minister.
(2023)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5192749
(2013)
There have been discussions on HN about this topic across administrations. That is not to say that there aren’t differences in degree, but the government has long maintained that it has special rights to conduct searches at the border that would not be permitted elsewhere.
Government always want to have as much control as it can possibly acquire.
If Obama and Biden really did suck that much, and if Trump's the savior that they claim, he should be doing less of it, not more.
Of course, that's blatantly ignoring the whole premise of Trump - a wannabe dictator implementing totalitarianism for the far-right in exchange for an opportunity to use the presidency for his personal gain in direct violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution - but that would be the improvement, not just the targeting of people you don't like with the same tactics.
As soon as you say "Trump man bad" then the underlying discussion that needs to be had is lost.