Quote:
Originally Posted by joblack
Thatīs not right. If I fly from Germany to the USA they can confiscate my tech stuff (laptop, e-book reader, ...) without any reason ('Donīt like my nose ..') and I can try to get it back.
As an offtopic: They could also arrest me because I could have the same name as some 'terrorist' (which I supposely donīt have because Iīm born in Germany ... but ...) and I could find myself a nice place in Guantanamo Bay (and I would rot there until the end of time ...).
If they take your property and youīre freedom it isnīt depending on your civil rights?
You donīt have to be a rocket scientist to see that this is wrong.
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No .... they can "search" it. Please do point me to anything in the customs laws and policies of the United States that says they may "confiscate" it for no reason.
Search .... they look at it.
Confiscate ... they take it away and you don't get it back.
If they take my property because I have broken a law that allows them to take my property, then no .... that is not an infringement of my civil rights.
In addition, border searches generally are not considered to be an infringement of civil rights. Never have been, and I doubt they ever will be.
If you are detained as an "enemy combatant" ... then I feel heartily sorry for you. Even more so if it is in error. However, people determined to be either terrorists or enemy combatants are on very shaky ground these days.
The "civil rights" of non-citizens is a very complex area of the law here. However, as mentioned below ... in a rather long post ... whether or not you have a "reasonable expectation of privacy" at the international border depends on what the Customs Department dictates.
And, please do not confuse the jobs of the legislative, executive and judicial branches. If the executive branch of our government (as in Customs) comes up with a policy, and the judicial branch determines that said policy is not a violation of anyone's civil rights, and the legislative branch does not see fit to enact a law that over rides that policy .... what the next president has to say about it isn't going to matter all that much.
It's something I rather like about this country. No matter how big a boob gets voted into the office of president ... things still seem to work out in the end.
And .... if you see something wrong with that system, then as far as I can tell, you just don't have a very good grasp on the whole topic. No reason that you should ... you don't live here, you haven't made all that much of a study of it, but it never seems to fail that the people who understand our system of government the least are always the ones who want to complain the most about it.