AOPA Pilot Magazine - February 2020 - 106

NEWS & NOTES

MEMBER PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

Crossing
the border

Intrusive searches are
Fourth Amendment violations
WHEN TRAVELING INTERNATIONALLY,

either by general aviation or other means,
it's important to be aware of your rights
and the government's authority at the
border. In a recent decision in the ongoing Alasaad v. McAleenan case, a U.S.
District Court held that suspicionless border searches of personal electronic devices
such as cellphones and laptops are an
unconstitutional violation of the Fourth
Amendment. International airports and
ports of entry are considered the "functional equivalent" of an international
border, so the same rights and authorities
are in play when physically crossing the
border as when encountering agents from
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) or
Immigration and Customs Enforcement
(ICE) at an airport.
The lawsuit stems from intrusive
searches by CBP and ICE of the devices
of several U.S. citizens and one lawful permanent resident. These searches included
manually looking through data such as pictures and text messages contained on the
devices, and in some cases copying and
retaining data from the devices through
wireless or wired connections to government equipment. Routine or cursory
searches, such as searches to determine

BY CHAD MAYER

Pilot Protection
Services

merely that a device can power on and contains data, are not affected by the ruling.
It is well understood that the government has broad authority at the border to
support its interest in excluding contraband and people ineligible to enter. By the
same token, the court found that "individuals have a reduced expectation of privacy
at the international border." In weighing the legitimate governmental interest
against the intrusion upon the individuals'
privacy, the court determined that agents
must have reasonable suspicion before
conducting a search of personal electronic
devices involving accessing data. That
standard is met when agents "can point to
specific and articulable facts" that, based
on rational inferences from those facts as
well as the agents' "training and experience," give rise to reasonable suspicion
that the devices to be searched contain
contraband.
The reasonable suspicion standard
is well below the more familiar probable
cause standard, and there is no requirement for agents to obtain a warrant to
search personal electronic devices at the
border. Nevertheless, the ruling does
change the status quo by making it impermissible to conduct such a search without

at least a particularized suspicion about the
contents of the device.

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aopa.org/pps
CHAD MAYER is is an in-house attorney for

the AOPA Legal Services Plan.

ADAM ANSWERS
B Y A DA M M E R E D I T H , A O PA
AV I AT I O N F I N A N C E
Q: What's the minimum purchase price to obtain a 10-year
loan? I'm looking at aircraft in
the $20,000 to $30,000 range,
manufactured after 1960.
A: The minimum loan amount
required for a 10-year term
is $20,000. This is after the
minimum 15-percent down
payment. Therefore, the minimum purchase price should
be around $24,000. Please feel
free to give us a call as you get
closer to purchasing. We recommend that AOPA pilots get
preapproved as they shop.

aopafinance.com
800-62-PLANE (75263)

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106 | AOPA PILOT February 2020

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AOPA Pilot Magazine - February 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of AOPA Pilot Magazine - February 2020