第四巡回法院：边境人员可手动搜查你的手机，无需任何怀疑
英文标题：🔶 Fourth Circuit: Border Agents Can Search Your Phone by Hand, No Suspicion Needed
美国第四巡回上诉法院在 U.S. v. Belmonte Cardozo 案中裁定，边境执法人员对手机进行手动搜查属于“常规”边境搜查，无需搜查令或个别化怀疑。法院将手动搜查与借助取证软件提取设备全部数据的取证式搜查区分开来，认为后者适用更高标准。EFF 批评称，两类搜查均可能暴露通信记录、照片、政治与宗教观点等高度私密信息，技术手段的差异不应导致不同的第四修正案保护标准。该裁决意味着，在第四巡回法院辖区内，边境人员可能通过手动操作绕开本应适用于电子设备搜查的更严格限制。
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中文
法律实习生 Suzanne Castillo 是本文的主要作者。
第四巡回上诉法院在 U.S. v. Belmonte Cardozo 一案中作出了一项令人失望的判决。电子前哨基金会（EFF）与全国美国公民自由联盟（ACLU）、其马里兰州、北卡罗来纳州、南卡罗来纳州及弗吉尼亚州分支机构，以及美国全国刑事辩护律师协会（NACDL）共同提交了法庭之友意见书。
我们主张，边境电子设备搜查应当基于可能原因取得搜查令；但至少，无论执法人员是手动搜查，还是使用接入设备并下载其全部内容以供检索的取证软件，所有边境设备搜查都应适用同一套第四修正案标准。
遗憾的是，法院驳回了这一主张，并裁定手动搜查适用较低标准。这使得政府仅因边境执法人员选择手动搜查、而非使用取证工具，便可在毫无违法嫌疑的情况下实施极具侵入性的电子设备搜查。
边境搜查例外遇上你的手机
第四修正案要求政府对个人或财产进行的搜查必须合理；通常，这意味着需要从法官处取得基于可能原因的搜查令。
但如果无搜查令的搜查符合搜查令要求的一项例外，其仍可能被视为合理，其中包括允许执法人员在边境搜查个人随身物品的例外。鉴于政府有权控制哪些人和物可以进入美国，边境搜查例外允许对跨越美国边境的个人或财产进行无搜查令搜查，也适用于国际机场等具有边境同等功能的地点。
历史上，法院将对行李、车辆和个人物品的边境搜查归类为“常规”搜查，因此即便没有任何证据表明旅客存在不当行为，此类搜查也属合理；法院还认定，某些更具侵入性的“非常规”搜查，例如特定的身体搜查以及会损坏财产的搜查，需要具备合理怀疑。
但个人对于手机或笔记本电脑中个人数据的隐私权益，与其对手提箱内容所享有的有限隐私权益截然不同。
最高法院在 Riley v. California (2014) 一案中处理了手机隐私问题，裁定“附带逮捕搜查”这一搜查令例外不适用于手机，因此至少在美国境内，搜查手机通常需要搜查令。法院承认，人们对手机拥有前所未有的隐私利益，即便是简短的手动搜查，也可能揭示“一个人私生活的总和”，包括政治立场、宗教信仰、性取向等。因此，最高法院认为，电子设备搜查与搜查包袋或实体容器“几乎没有相似之处”，应当以不同方式进行评估。
在 Riley 之后，第四巡回上诉法院审理了两起涉及取证式搜查的边境设备搜查案件，其中边境执法人员使用外部软件提取并分析设备数据。
在 U.S. v. Kolsuz(2018) 一案中，第四巡回上诉法院裁定，在边境对手机进行取证式搜查“必须被视为非常规边境搜查，需要对跨国犯罪具有某种程度的个别化怀疑”；但法院没有裁定所需标准究竟仅为合理怀疑，还是基于可能原因的搜查令。
随后，在 U.S. v. Aigbekaen(2019) 一案中，第四巡回上诉法院裁定，为支持纯粹国内执法调查而进行的边境设备取证式搜查需要搜查令。法院还重申了 Kolsuz 案针对与边境有关的设备取证式搜查所确立的一般规则：政府“必须对某项犯罪具有个别化怀疑，而该犯罪必须与边境搜查例外的目的存在某种关联，包括保护国家安全、征收关税、阻止不受欢迎者入境，或扰乱出口或进口违禁品的行为。”
在 Belmonte Cardozo 案中，手动搜查终于被提交至法院审理。
一项令人失望的裁决
Jose Belmonte Cardozo 从玻利维亚前往美国时，已被美国政府列入关注对象；他在华盛顿杜勒斯国际机场遇到一名美国海关与边境保护局（CBP）官员。该官员手动搜查了他的手机，并发现儿童性虐待材料（CSAM），即被视为“数字违禁品”的内容，随后 Belmonte Cardozo 被逮捕并遭到刑事起诉。
本次上诉的争点是：边境手动设备搜查应适用何种标准。第四巡回上诉法院裁定，与取证式搜查不同，手动搜查属于“常规”搜查，因此即使没有搜查令或个别化怀疑，依第四修正案仍属合理。
法院的裁决基于手动搜查与取证式搜查之间的四项差异：(1) 手动搜查由人而非机器执行；(2) 手动搜查的范围取决于执法人员的时间和精力，而取证式搜查是全面的；(3) 手动搜查只能揭示用户通常可访问的内容，而取证式搜查能够发现已删除文件、缓存片段、元数据等；(4) 手动搜查受制于执法人员会逐渐消退的记忆或不完备的笔记，而取证式搜查会创建永久副本。
但在指出这些技术差异时，法院从未解释_为什么_这些差异足以使手动搜查适用较低标准。
第四巡回上诉法院的裁决存在问题，因为正如我们在法庭之友意见书中所主张的那样，手动搜查所能触及的数据类别与取证式搜查_相同_——这些数据可以揭示个人身份和生活中高度私密的方面。搜查是由执法人员的拇指完成，还是由软件完成，并不重要：最终结果同样具有侵入性。因此，所有设备搜查都应纳入搜查令要求，或者至少适用相同的第四修正案标准。
法院一再强调本案搜查仅持续两分钟，暗示这种时间受限的搜查并不侵犯隐私。但个人对其数据所享有的隐私利益，并不会因手机是_如何_被搜查或搜查持续_多久_而改变。在某人的私人短信或照片中滚动两分钟同样是对隐私的侵犯，并且即使在如此短暂的时间内，也可能揭示该人的私密细节。
此外，随着设备原生搜索功能不断改进，手动搜查可通过关键词搜索在数秒内找出个人信息，照片也不例外。过去可能需要滚动一小时才能找到的相同信息，如今可迅速呈现，这进一步表明时间受限的搜查未必对隐私侵害更小。关键不在于搜查本身的范围，而在于我们手机中数据前所未有且不断扩大的广度。
一线曙光
仍有一线曙光：第四巡回上诉法院依赖搜查仅持续两分钟这一事实，因而为更长时间的手动搜查可能触发更高层级的怀疑要求留下了空间。但在明确界线被划定之前，第四巡回上诉法院辖区内的边境执法人员可以利用手动搜查，规避原本应当适用的更严格第四修正案标准。与此同时，EFF 将继续反对边境极具侵入性、无搜查令且无嫌疑基础的设备搜查，并争取强有力的隐私标准，以保护我们最私密的数据。
English / 原文
Legal intern Suzanne Castillo was the principal author of this post.
The Fourth Circuit issued a disappointing opinion in U.S. v. Belmonte Cardozo, a case in which EFF filed an amicus brief, alongside the national ACLU, its Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia affiliates, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL).
We argued that electronic device searches at the border should require a warrant based on probable cause, but at minimum, regardless of whether an officer searches by hand or with forensic software that plugs into a device and downloads its entire contents for search, the same Fourth Amendment standard should apply to all device searches at the border.
Unfortunately, the court rejected that argument and ruled that a lower standard applies to manual searches, allowing the government to conduct extraordinarily invasive electronic device searches without any suspicion of wrongdoing, simply because the border officer chooses to search by hand rather than with a forensic tool.
The Border Search Exception Meets Your Phone
The Fourth Amendment requires that government searches of persons or property be reasonable, which usually means obtaining a warrant based on probable cause from a judge.
But a warrantless search can still be reasonable if it falls within an exception to the warrant requirement, including the exception that allows officers to search your belongings at the border. The border search exception allows warrantless searches of persons or property crossing the U.S. border, including the functional equivalent of the border such as international airports, given the government’s interests in controlling who and what may enter the country.
Historically, courts have categorized border searches of luggage, vehicles, and personal effects as “routine” and thus reasonable even if conducted without any suspicion that the traveler has engaged in wrongdoing; courts have also held that more invasive “nonroutine” searches, such as certain body searches and searches that damage property, require reasonable suspicion.
But a person’s privacy interests in the personal data on a phone or laptop are extraordinarily different than their limited privacy interests in the contents of their suitcase.
The Supreme Court addressed cell phone privacy in Riley v. California (2014), holding that the search-incident-to-arrest exception to the warrant requirement did not apply to cell phones, thereby generally requiring a warrant for phone searches, at least at the interior of the country. The court recognized the unprecedented privacy interests people have in their cell phones and how even brief manual searches can reveal the “sum of an individual’s private life,” including our political affiliations, religious beliefs, sexuality, and more. Accordingly, the Supreme Court held that because electronic device searches bear “little resemblance” to searches of bags or physical containers, they should be evaluated differently.
Following Riley , the Fourth Circuit considered two border device search cases involving forensic searches, in which border officers used external software to extract and analyze a device’s data.
In U.S. v. Kolsuz(2018), the Fourth Circuit held that a forensic search of a cell phone at the border “must be considered a nonroutine border search, requiring some measure of individualized suspicion” of a transnational offense, but the court declined to decide whether the standard is only reasonable suspicion or instead a probable cause warrant.
Then in U.S. v. Aigbekaen(2019), the Fourth Circuit held that a forensic device search at the border in support of a purely domestic law enforcement investigation requires a warrant. The court also reiterated the general Kolsuz rule for a forensic border-related device search: the “Government must have individualized suspicion of an offense that bears some nexus to the border search exception's purposes of protecting national security, collecting duties, blocking the entry of unwanted persons, or disrupting efforts to export or import contraband.”
In Belmonte Cardozo , manual searches were finally before the court.
A Disappointing Decision
Jose Belmonte Cardozo was already on the U.S. government’s radar when he traveled from Bolivia to the U.S. and was met by a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer at Washington Dulles International Airport. The officer manually searched his cell phone and found child sexual abuse material (CSAM), considered “digital contraband,” leading to Belmonte Cardozo’s arrest and criminal prosecution.
At issue on appeal was what standard should apply to manual device searches at the border. The Fourth Circuit held that, unlike forensic searches, manual searches are “routine” and thus reasonable under the Fourth Amendment without a warrant or individualized suspicion.
The court’s holding hinged on four differences between manual and forensic searches: (1) in a manual search, a person does the searching, not a machine; (2) a manual search’s breadth depends on the officer’s time and energy, while forensic searches are comprehensive; (3) manual searches reveal only what a user can typically access, while forensic searches can uncover deleted files, cached fragments, metadata, and more; and (4) manual searches are subject to an officer’s fading memory or imperfect notes, while forensic searches create a permanent copy.
But in identifying these technical differences, the court never explains why they justify a lower standard for manual searches.
The Fourth Circuit’s holding is problematic because, as we argued in our amicus brief, manual searches reach the same categories of data as forensic searches—data that can reveal highly personal aspects of our identities and our lives. It does not matter if a search is conducted by an agent’s thumbs or by software: the end result is equally as invasive, therefore all device searches should fall under the warrant requirement, or at least the same Fourth Amendment standard.
The court repeatedly emphasized that the search here lasted only two minutes, suggesting that the time-limited search was not privacy-invasive. But an individual’s privacy interests in their personal data don’t change based on how their phone is searched or how long. Scrolling for two minutes through someone’s personal text messages or photos is an invasion of privacy that may reveal intimate details about the person even in that short period of time.
Moreover, as devices’ native search functions improve, manual searches can surface personal information in seconds through keyword searches, even for photos, where it might have taken an hour of scrolling to find the same information, further showing that a time-limited search is not necessarily less privacy-invasive. What matters is not the breadth of the search itself, but the unprecedented (and growing) breadth of data on our phones.
A Silver Lining
There’s one silver lining: by relying on the fact that the search lasted two minutes, the Fourth Circuit left open the possibility that lengthier manual searches could trigger heightened suspicion requirements. But until a clear line is drawn, border officers within the Fourth Circuit’s jurisdiction can use manual searches to sidestep heightened Fourth Amendment standards that would otherwise apply. In the meantime, EFF will keep fighting against extraordinarily invasive warrantless, suspicionless device earches at the border, and for robust privacy standards to protect our most personal data.