You’re way off about when it’s illegal to start destroying your property that the police want to seize during an investigation.

"Investigation" is a pretty generous way to label "some thugs working for an authoritarian state want to look for incriminating stuff - including criticism or mockery of them or their leader - on your communications device".

Whatever the American legal system may say, a couple of thugs with no warrant conducting searches and seizures of data is a blatant violation of the Constitution's intent. This is the sort of behavior Americans used to rightfully condemn.

Calling border patrol "thugs" doesn't really bolster your argument to anyone except people who already agree with you.

I find that choice of words more likely to cause people who already disagree with them to fixate on it rather than the substance of their comment.

it just makes those people dismiss it. doesn't really do any good.

I'm all for privacy and find this seizure stuff really wrong but to me it just looks like another form of "orange man bad"

The Border Patrol have been a violent and abusive branch of government since their inception. Their abuses under Republican and Democratic Presidents alike have been reported across the spectrum of America's media for many years. 'Thug' with it's roots in groups of violent organized criminals who preyed on travelers - is an accurate description for them.

Check my last submission on this site -- same news story (different site). I agree with them, and it's distracting and damaging to the cause.

You're also essentially saying the same thing I did, because I'd argue most people already have a non-neutral stance on the subject.

I would also like the fourth amendment to apply at the border.

Have you read United States v. Flores-Montano? The border search exception (which I disagree with) is pretty old. Can you find an era in which Americans in general found it objectionable or were united in rejecting its application to data?

"Evidence" has never been limited to the subject of a warrant. Destruction of evidence statutes typically include material that is subject to a police investigation.

But are not investigations typically under some reasonable suspicion that a crime had occurred?

Reasonable suspicion is required for a terry stop but that does not apply at a border crossing. Everyone can be stopped and questioned and searched at a border crossing.

An ”investigation” is just a fancy word that broadly describes the type of information collection that law enforcement does. Yes, it is typically about things they think are crimes. Because that’s their job. But there’s not some legal hurdle they have to pass here, the word describes their work.

they of course arent police and arent investigating anything

instead they are harassing

It is illegal to destroy evidence even if you weren’t guilty of the crime that was allegedly being investigated.

If someone accuses you of a crime, committing a different crime is probably not a good move, in any situation.

To me it’s all quite analogous to walking up to, but not crossing, a border with, say, a fruit that’s legal to possess on the side you’re on, but not on the other side, and either eating or throwing away that fruit before crossing.

“Hey! I saw you holding that Mexican pepper in Mexico, and then you threw it in that Mexican trash can before crossing into Texas!”

“Yeah, so?”

But that's not what happened here. Here, you were trying to bring the pepper over, got inspected and somehow got rid of it because you were able to be found out.

This is more like bringing the pepper across and then quickly swallowing it when they ask you to look at it.

Or emptying your bottle of water when the TSA found it on the XRAY. Unlike the pepper he's actually allowed to have that data on his phone both sides of the border.

which also would be fine?

Hit and miss, depending on the security guy. Some had me pour it out.

Only if you ignore the "when they ask you to look at it" part.

> Who said it was evidence? Did a judge authorize or issue a warrant to collect said evidence? Absent that, it's just your property, and you can do with it as you please.

Why do people go sovereign citizen when reality doesn't work their way? Stop imagining that the way you want things to be is the way things really are.

Cops do not need a judge to authorize the seizing of evidence. Cops do not need judges to decide what evidence is. Tell me, why did you just pretend like these are real requirements? I can understand why you'd want it to be that, but you wanting it to be that doesn't change reality.

It's as if you've just learned about the Fourth Amendment but know nothing about the nuance behind it.

Your system wouldn't even work at all. Let's imagine the cops get a tip that a bald man with a blue tshirt shot a man. They patrol the streets and find a match. By your logic they should not have the ability to search the man and seize his gun as evidence until a judge issues a warrant.

How about, is there reasonable suspicion that a crime has occurred?

Not required at an airport, for whatever reason.

The constitution doesn't disappear at the airport. The man is a US citizen. He could have remained silent, and they would eventually have let him in.

Relevant reading for you: https://www.aclu.org/documents/constitution-100-mile-border-...

And no, they wouldn’t have denied him entry, but they would have seized his device.

I enjoy the funny implication it creates, that then perhaps if you're entering US in 2026 it means there's something wrong with you.

The reason is anti-immigration

uhh, are you a lawyer with knowledge about how evidence works?

its not just a word, its a specific legal term

cops definitely do need judges to say what evidence is admissible, and they really dont have thr ability to just declare anything they want as evidence and just steal it

Yes this is different than when law enforcement serve a warrant and the defendant wipes his computer before the agents can get a hold of it. In that case the warrant covers what you destroyed as evidence.

Though during traffic stops, if a defendant disposes of his drugs while on the run, that can also carry a charge of destroying evidence even though no warrant was issued.

IANAL

Hm but the drugs are only evidence because they're illegal? So the phone owner only destroyed evidence if the phone contained something illegal, but innocent until proben guilty?

No, destroying evidence is a crime even if possession of that evidence is legal.

Who decided that it's evidence?

Law enforcement. That's like, their job.

After they get it when they are authorized to get it. You cannot point at random things and call them evidence. For instance, I can take a dump and flush it, despite law enforcement's assertion that my stool is evidence in some imaginary crime.

It doesn’t have to be something the police have already collected. It could be something that they have yet to collect.

The textbook tampering with evidence example is: drug dealer tries to flush the drugs when the police knock on the door.

Yes, when they are authorized to make a drug bust. And that's assuming they catch him before he flushes, i.e., get the drugs. Otherwise, what are they going to say? He is a drug dealer because we heard the flush? Or let's say they are doing a missing person's search and hear the flush. What now? We came looking for a missing person, but heard the flush, so there were drugs whose evidence he destroyed?

Of course, tampering with evidence is — itself - a crime. And you need evidence to prove that crime.

But yeah, people tamper with evidence because they think they can get away with it. That doesn’t mean they always succeed in cleanly doing it without creating evidence of the tampering itself.

Without even looking if it's worthy of evidence or not?

Yes, absolutely. Something can be evidence if the police haven’t even seen it at all.

For example: the police think you are running a fraud scheme. They knock on your door. You shred a bunch of paper. The police wanted to see the paper. You have violated the US law on tampering with evidence.

The prosecutor can argue that you violated some laws, but they will have to convince a jury beyond a reasonable doubt of that. And they will need a lot more than "I heard the shredder" to convict you. In an overall case, the shredding can be a piece of the puzzle. Shredding, standing alone, is not a crime, nor is shredding as a general matter tampering with evidence.

Yes, if someone wants to bring charges for evidence tampering, they will be required to collect additional evidence to successfully prosecute that crime. That's how it always works. They might collect fragments of the documents themselves, communications regarding the shredding, etc.

Evidence is simply a word to describe the artifacts that one wishes to use to support their case. There’s not some gate-kept process to “become evidence”.

Destroying evidence is a crime, regardless of any warrant.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1519