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Originally Posted by jsibelius
In order for a survey to be considered valid, you have to have a certain minimum number of responses, so I'm not too concerned about what you think is probably a low response. I'm content they got enough responses to make the survey valid. Unless you want to dig up the actual survey and present it here?
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It didn't say whether the survey was "valid," and there's no such thing as a magic number of responses to make a survey "valid." The article didn't even mention the medium. For all you know, it could have been a poll posted on an internet message board.
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You said they can't seize laptops because of the "5th amendment," which only states that private property will not be taken for public use without compensation. I'm not even sure that applies here, depending on what use they had for any laptops that didn't get returned to their owners (and some of them do not get returned to their owners). In any case, I presented you with several articles that say they are taking laptops for search and for seizure, just like you asked. That your mind has been changed or not, or whether I put any "new information on the table" for you, is of little concern to me. You asked for proof. I gave it to you. Whether you like the examples I gave or not is your concern.
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You're getting the Constitutional Law wrong. Yes, the 5th Amendment
might apply here, but really, this is probably more of a 4th Amendment issue if it is anything at all.
The Supreme Court has ruled that warrantless searches without probable cause or suspicion are just fine. If an individual in a border search refuses to give up their password (which is fine), the government's right to search the laptop does not evaporate. The government now will proceed to "plan B" which involves shipping your computer off to another government agency where your laptop will sit in a pile, eventually be cracked, evaluated, and if nothing is found, returned to you and the data deleted.
A 5th Amendment issue might arise here if the time the government takes to evaluate your computer exceeds what is reasonable, but nowhere in any of your articles has that allegation been made.
Further, if the government finds so much as one pirated piece of software on your laptop, it can be, and probably will be seized as property used in the commission of a crime. You have no recourse there except to sue the government for the property -- probably not worth it unless you know for a fact that you're innocent. The government doesn't even have to charge you with a crime, and in most cases, folks just say "It's not mine!"
The "seizure" is a temporary one if no evidence of a crime is found. None of your articles say that the reasonableness threshold has ever been crossed -- just that searches are happening. I never denied that.