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Originally Posted by Midtowner
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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I think you may need to take a course in statistics. You're absolutely right that the article in question did not say whether the survey was valid (news articles rarely do because average Joes who read the paper don't know what the technical term "validity" means), and I could not determine from the information provided within the article whether the survey was published in any kind of professional journal. So at this point, we can probably consider our survey merely anecdotal. But you are very wrong about that "magic number" thing. Depending on the population size, in order to be valid, you have a receive a certain minimum number of responses in order for the survey to be considered "valid." This is called your "sample" and the larger your population, the smaller, proportionally, your sample size has to be. However, now we can determine that this particular survey was not valid because according to my table, a sample size of 100 survey respondents is representative of a population of only about 135 people - NOT the general traveling public. Surprisingly, for an accurate representation, you would need only 384 survey responses to represent about 1,000,000 travelers. That information comes right out of a statistical course package I received from my college instructor.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Midtowner
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.
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You were the one who quoted the 5th Amendment, not me:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Midtowner
Well, they can't seize them for an indefinite period of time.
They just can't. They may think they can... but they can't. There's no case that says they have that sort of power and there certainly is this nasty little thing called the 5th Amendment which sort of prevents takings without compensation.
...
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So who's getting Constitutional Law wrong? One of the articles I posted showed how an Appeals Court has ruled in favor of allowing these searches and seizures, so obviously our court system does not see a 4th Amendment problem either.
FWIW, "indefinite" is not the same as "forever." And taking property for a public use is not the same as confiscating personal property as part of a crime investigation. They certainly can take property without compensation if you've used that property to commit a crime. For example, if you used your car to smuggle drugs, police can seize your car and keep it forever. They can later put it into serve as a police vehicle with absolutely no compensation to you, whatsoever. They can later sell it at auction and keep the proceeds for the purpose of funding department activities. You are not entitled to any of that money, even though it had been your car.
And on another note:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Midtowner
Yet it's a law on the books. Are you suggesting we should ignore the law because it is, in your opinion, a bad law?
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Well...that
is one way to get rid of bad laws. You break them, get arrested for them, and then challenge them in court. Remember Rosa Parks?