The Department of Homeland Security's civil rights watchdog has concluded that "intuition and hunch" are among the primary reasons why it is "inadvisable" to establish constitutional safeguards protecting travelers' electronics from being searched for any reason along the U.S. border.
The DHS, which secures the nation's border, on Wednesday released a redacted report of its "Civil Rights/Civil liberties Impact Assessment" (.pdf) pertaining to border searches of electronic devices, including laptops and mobile phones. In February, the DHS disclosed an executive summary of the 21-page report, concluding then that "imposing a requirement that officers have reasonable suspicion in order to conduct a border search of an electronic device would be operationally harmful without concomitant civil rights/civil liberties benefits."
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