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Federal Government is Increasingly Snooping Through Laptops and Phones at Airports

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Air travel has become an incredible pain in the you-know-what these days, thanks to a massive and misguided set of overreaches by the federal government.

First, there’s the TSA:  The blue-shirted goons who are underpaid, undertrained, and completely inept.  They are little more than mall cops and hall monitors who’ve been given a badge; something that vindicates them in ways they have never once proved worthy of.

There’s nothing worse than a waste of taxpayer money that also gropes you.

Now, however, something even more sinister is occurring at airports around the nation, and it is an enormous invasion of privacy for supposedly “free” Americans.

U.S. government searches of travelers’ cellphones and laptops at airports and border crossings nearly quadrupled since 2015 and were being done for reasons beyond customs and immigration enforcement, according to papers filed Tuesday in a federal lawsuit that claims scouring the electronic devices without a warrant is unconstitutional.

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The government has vigorously defended the searches, which rose to 33,295 in fiscal 2018, as a critical tool to protect America. But the newly filed documents claim the scope of the warrantless searches has expanded to assist in enforcement of tax, bankruptcy, environmental and consumer protection laws, gather intelligence and advance criminal investigations.

Agents with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement consider requests from other government agencies in determining whether to search travelers’ electronic devices, the court papers said. They added that agents are searching the electronic devices of not only targeted individuals but their associates, friends and relatives.

This erosion of privacy is in direct conflict with the Constitution of our nation, particularly the 4th Amendment, which protects us from unlawful or unwarranted search and seizure.

 

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About the Author:
As a lifelong advocate for the dream promised us in the Constitution, Andrew West has spent his years authoring lush prose editorial dirges regarding America's fall from grace and her path back to prosperity. When West isn't railing against the offensive whims of the mainstream media or the ideological cruelty that is so rampant in the US, he spends his time seeking adventurous new food and fermented beverages, with the occasional round of golf peppered in.




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