PASADENA, Calif. — A Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals panel ruled April 21 that a border search of an airline passenger’s laptop computer, which ultimately led to the discovery of child pornography, did not require “reasonable suspicion” and did not violate the man’s Fourth Amendment rights (United States of America v. Michael Timothy Arnold, No. 06-50581, 9th Cir.; 2008 U.S. App. LEXIS 8590).
In October 2006, the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California granted a motion by Michael Arnold to suppress evidence of the illegal, pornographic images discovered during a random search by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol personnel at Los Angeles International Airport that led to criminal charges against him. The District Court found that border searches of laptops and other electronic devices “implicated dignity and privacy concerns” and required a “heightened level of suspicion” that was not necessary for searches of a person’s luggage, pockets or similar items.
In reversing the lower court’s ruling, the Ninth Circuit panel sided with the Fourth Circuit’s ruling in United States v. Ickes (393 F.3d 501, 506-08 [4th Cir. 2005]), holding that warrantless searches are “permissible under the border search doctrine.” The panel rejected Arnold’s arguments that the laptop’s capacity to store large amounts of personal and “expressive” material invoked a higher standard of “particularized suspicion” and distinguished the laptop search from more intrusive searches of a person’s body. Arnold failed to demonstrate why the laptop search was “logically any different” from luggage searches, noting that there was no evidence that the search caused any “exceptional damage to [his] property” or was “particularly offensive.”
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