Court Cases Challenge Border Searches of Laptops and Phones

The government has historically had broad power to search travelers and their property at the border. But that prerogative is being challenged as more people travel with extensive personal and business information on devices that would typically require a warrant to examine.

Several court cases seek to limit the ability of border agents to search, copy and even seize travelers’ laptops, cameras and phones without suspicion of illegal activity.

“What we are asking is for a court to rule that the government must have a good reason to believe that someone has engaged in wrongdoing before it is allowed to go through their electronic devices,” said Catherine Crump, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union who is representing plaintiffs in two lawsuits challenging digital border searches.

A decision in one of those suits, Abidor v. Napolitano, is expected soon, according to the case manager for Judge Edward R. Korman, who is writing the opinion for the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

In that case, Pascal Abidor, who is studying for his doctorate in Islamic studies, sued the government after he was handcuffed and detained at the border during an Amtrak trip from Montreal to New York. He was questioned and placed in a cell for several hours. His laptop was searched and kept for 11 days.

According to government data, these types of searches are rare: about 36,000 people are referred to secondary screening by United States Customs and Border Protection daily, and roughly a dozen of those travelers are subject to a search of their electronic devices.

Courts have long held that Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches do not apply at the border, based on the government’s interest in combating crime and terrorism. But Mr. Pascal’s lawsuit and similar cases question whether confiscating a laptop for days or weeks and analyzing its data at another site goes beyond the typical border searches. They also depart from the justification used in other digital searches, possession of child pornography.

“We’re getting more into whether this is targeting political speech,” Ms. Crump said.

In another case the A.C.L.U. is arguing, House v. Napolitano, border officials at Chicago O’Hare Airport confiscated a laptop, camera and USB drive belonging to David House, a computer programmer, and kept his devices for seven weeks.

The lawsuit charges that Mr. House was singled out because of his association with the Bradley Manning Support Network. Pfc. Bradley Manning is a former military intelligence analyst accused of leaking thousands of military and diplomatic documents to the antisecrecy group WikiLeaks.

In March, Judge Denise J. Casper of Federal District Court in Massachusetts denied the government’s motion to dismiss the suit, saying that although the government did not need reasonable suspicion to search someone’s laptop at the border, that power did not strip Mr. House of his First Amendment rights. Legal scholars say this ruling could set the stage for the courts to place some limits on how the government conducts digital searches.

“The District Court basically said you don’t need individualized suspicion to search an electronic device at the border,” said Patrick E. Corbett, a professor of criminal law and procedure at Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Lansing, Mich. “What they were troubled with was the fact that the government held these devices for 49 days.”

Customs and Border Protection, part of the Department of Homeland Security, declined to discuss the policy in an interview, but a spokeswoman for the agency said in an e-mail: “Keeping Americans safe and enforcing our nation’s laws in an increasingly digital world depends on our ability to lawfully screen all materials — electronic or otherwise — entering the United States. We are committed to ensuring the rights and privacies of all people while making certain that D.H.S. can take the lawful actions necessary to secure our borders.”

The statement also referred to the agency’s policy on border searches of electronic devices, which says that officers can keep these devices for a “reasonable period of time,” including at an off-site location, and seek help from other government agencies to decrypt, translate or interpret the information they contain. If travelers choose not to share a password for a device, the government may hold it to find a way to gain access to the data.

Digital Domain: Cellphone Cases Can Imitate Their Makers - Digital Domain

Some devices, like my Android phone, a Galaxy Nexus by Samsung, have a back cover that slides off and a battery that pops out. And when evaluators at iFixit, a Web site offering do-it-yourself repair manuals and parts, disassembled Google’s new Nexus 7 tablet for a “teardown” review, they found that it was easy to open and repair.

In iFixit’s video review, the narrator describes how the battery can be replaced without unscrewing a single screw. She is moved to declare, “The sustainability-geek inside me wants to hug Google for this.”

Other vendors — Apple, would you please take a bow? — make products that are designed to keep users out. The case on my wife’s iPhone 4 is closed with screws of Apple’s own devising that require a special screwdriver.

IFixit offers a tool kit for replacing those screws with standard ones. It mischievously markets this as a “Liberation Kit.”

It isn’t surprising that Apple, the epitome of the closed organization and overlord of the iPhone’s tightly controlled software ecosystem, would design screws that, in effect, serve as locks. And one can see how it would be in Apple’s interest to make it hard for users to extend the life of older models — it’s a way to encourage the purchase of the newest, greatest Apple stuff.

Google, which until now has not done much in consumer electronics hardware with its own brand name, is positioning itself as a conspicuous alternative to Apple, in design as in other aspects. As long as Apple embraces closed systems — and closed cases — Google can take advantage of an opportunity to be the un-Apple and to open up.

Using components that are easy to recycle is one way to score points for selling an environmentally friendly product. Apple’s products rank high in that regard, says Kyle Wiens, co-founder of iFixit. But Apple doesn’t want its users to service its devices, he says. So it scores lower in another important aspect of being “green”: extending a product’s useful life by making it easy to repair.

An Apple spokesman declined to comment.

In January, Sprint announced a “sustainable design” effort, in partnership with the environmental unit of UL, the independent testing and certification group. Sprint encourages all of its partner manufacturers to submit their handsets for evaluation of the “repairability and recyclability” of the devices. Those that attain a certain number of points will be designated as “certified” or, greenest of all, “platinum.”

Lois Fagan, Sprint director of product development, says, “We have a self-imposed goal that at least 50 percent of our portfolio of new phones in 2012 will be certified.”

Consumers who want to know which phones are the easiest to repair won’t get much guidance from UL Environment. It will say only whether a device has earned its “certified” or “platinum” designations. It does not say what points were earned for any particular criterion, like ease of removing the external enclosure or the battery, or availability of replacement parts. Nor does it disclose which handsets fail to earn enough points to be certified.

The ability to remove the battery is especially important to frequent phone users, because the original battery may not last the two-year commitment required in a standard contract.

Apple says its iPhone battery is designed to retain up to 80 percent of its original capacity after 400 full charge and discharge cycles. For phones out of warranty, it offers a battery replacement service for $79 if you send the phone to its repair center; shipping costs are extra. (Being without one’s phone is an inconvenience not reflected in the price.)

IFixit provides an alternative. It sells replacement batteries and the necessary tools and offers its free online repair manuals, prepared by fellow users. A replacement battery for the older iPhone 3G model is only $14.95, and there’s no painful parting with the phone in the process.

According to Mr. Wiens, iPhone batteries aren’t hard to replace, with the right screwdriver, available online. “Under five minutes; no technical skills required,” he says.

Even replacing the glass on an iPad 3 can be done by amateurs, he contends, but guidance is needed: “I have a pile of iPad 3s that we broke while trying to learn how to repair them. Last week we finally broke the code.”

IFixit offers manuals covering computers, cameras, game consoles and household appliances, too; its credo is “repair is recycling.”

Hooman Morvarid, president of

CellularDR.com, a repair business that handles phones from many manufacturers, says the most frequent problem he sees is broken glass, followed by a broken LCD screen that sits behind the glass. Increasingly, he says, the glass and LCD are fused together in a way that makes them impossible to separate if one or the other is broken. “So phones are actually becoming more expensive to repair,” he says.

The more that designers of mobile devices avoid fusing parts together, the easier they are to repair. And the repairs most likely to be undertaken are those we can do ourselves.

Randall Stross is an author based in Silicon Valley and a professor of business at San Jose State University. E-mail: stross@nytimes.com.

Digital Domain: Cellphone Cases Can Imitate Their Makers - Digital Domain

Some devices, like my Android phone, a Galaxy Nexus by Samsung, have a back cover that slides off and a battery that pops out. And when evaluators at iFixit, a Web site offering do-it-yourself repair manuals and parts, disassembled Google’s new Nexus 7 tablet for a “teardown” review, they found that it was easy to open and repair.

In iFixit’s video review, the narrator describes how the battery can be replaced without unscrewing a single screw. She is moved to declare, “The sustainability-geek inside me wants to hug Google for this.”

Other vendors — Apple, would you please take a bow? — make products that are designed to keep users out. The case on my wife’s iPhone 4 is closed with screws of Apple’s own devising that require a special screwdriver.

IFixit offers a tool kit for replacing those screws with standard ones. It mischievously markets this as a “Liberation Kit.”

It isn’t surprising that Apple, the epitome of the closed organization and overlord of the iPhone’s tightly controlled software ecosystem, would design screws that, in effect, serve as locks. And one can see how it would be in Apple’s interest to make it hard for users to extend the life of older models — it’s a way to encourage the purchase of the newest, greatest Apple stuff.

Google, which until now has not done much in consumer electronics hardware with its own brand name, is positioning itself as a conspicuous alternative to Apple, in design as in other aspects. As long as Apple embraces closed systems — and closed cases — Google can take advantage of an opportunity to be the un-Apple and to open up.

Using components that are easy to recycle is one way to score points for selling an environmentally friendly product. Apple’s products rank high in that regard, says Kyle Wiens, co-founder of iFixit. But Apple doesn’t want its users to service its devices, he says. So it scores lower in another important aspect of being “green”: extending a product’s useful life by making it easy to repair.

An Apple spokesman declined to comment.

In January, Sprint announced a “sustainable design” effort, in partnership with the environmental unit of UL, the independent testing and certification group. Sprint encourages all of its partner manufacturers to submit their handsets for evaluation of the “repairability and recyclability” of the devices. Those that attain a certain number of points will be designated as “certified” or, greenest of all, “platinum.”

Lois Fagan, Sprint director of product development, says, “We have a self-imposed goal that at least 50 percent of our portfolio of new phones in 2012 will be certified.”

Consumers who want to know which phones are the easiest to repair won’t get much guidance from UL Environment. It will say only whether a device has earned its “certified” or “platinum” designations. It does not say what points were earned for any particular criterion, like ease of removing the external enclosure or the battery, or availability of replacement parts. Nor does it disclose which handsets fail to earn enough points to be certified.

The ability to remove the battery is especially important to frequent phone users, because the original battery may not last the two-year commitment required in a standard contract.

Apple says its iPhone battery is designed to retain up to 80 percent of its original capacity after 400 full charge and discharge cycles. For phones out of warranty, it offers a battery replacement service for $79 if you send the phone to its repair center; shipping costs are extra. (Being without one’s phone is an inconvenience not reflected in the price.)

IFixit provides an alternative. It sells replacement batteries and the necessary tools and offers its free online repair manuals, prepared by fellow users. A replacement battery for the older iPhone 3G model is only $14.95, and there’s no painful parting with the phone in the process.

According to Mr. Wiens, iPhone batteries aren’t hard to replace, with the right screwdriver, available online. “Under five minutes; no technical skills required,” he says.

Even replacing the glass on an iPad 3 can be done by amateurs, he contends, but guidance is needed: “I have a pile of iPad 3s that we broke while trying to learn how to repair them. Last week we finally broke the code.”

IFixit offers manuals covering computers, cameras, game consoles and household appliances, too; its credo is “repair is recycling.”

Hooman Morvarid, president of

CellularDR.com, a repair business that handles phones from many manufacturers, says the most frequent problem he sees is broken glass, followed by a broken LCD screen that sits behind the glass. Increasingly, he says, the glass and LCD are fused together in a way that makes them impossible to separate if one or the other is broken. “So phones are actually becoming more expensive to repair,” he says.

The more that designers of mobile devices avoid fusing parts together, the easier they are to repair. And the repairs most likely to be undertaken are those we can do ourselves.

Randall Stross is an author based in Silicon Valley and a professor of business at San Jose State University. E-mail: stross@nytimes.com.

Digital Domain: Cellphone Cases Can Imitate Their Makers - Digital Domain

Some devices, like my Android phone, a Galaxy Nexus by Samsung, have a back cover that slides off and a battery that pops out. And when evaluators at iFixit, a Web site offering do-it-yourself repair manuals and parts, disassembled Google’s new Nexus 7 tablet for a “teardown” review, they found that it was easy to open and repair.

In iFixit’s video review, the narrator describes how the battery can be replaced without unscrewing a single screw. She is moved to declare, “The sustainability-geek inside me wants to hug Google for this.”

Other vendors — Apple, would you please take a bow? — make products that are designed to keep users out. The case on my wife’s iPhone 4 is closed with screws of Apple’s own devising that require a special screwdriver.

IFixit offers a tool kit for replacing those screws with standard ones. It mischievously markets this as a “Liberation Kit.”

It isn’t surprising that Apple, the epitome of the closed organization and overlord of the iPhone’s tightly controlled software ecosystem, would design screws that, in effect, serve as locks. And one can see how it would be in Apple’s interest to make it hard for users to extend the life of older models — it’s a way to encourage the purchase of the newest, greatest Apple stuff.

Google, which until now has not done much in consumer electronics hardware with its own brand name, is positioning itself as a conspicuous alternative to Apple, in design as in other aspects. As long as Apple embraces closed systems — and closed cases — Google can take advantage of an opportunity to be the un-Apple and to open up.

Using components that are easy to recycle is one way to score points for selling an environmentally friendly product. Apple’s products rank high in that regard, says Kyle Wiens, co-founder of iFixit. But Apple doesn’t want its users to service its devices, he says. So it scores lower in another important aspect of being “green”: extending a product’s useful life by making it easy to repair.

An Apple spokesman declined to comment.

In January, Sprint announced a “sustainable design” effort, in partnership with the environmental unit of UL, the independent testing and certification group. Sprint encourages all of its partner manufacturers to submit their handsets for evaluation of the “repairability and recyclability” of the devices. Those that attain a certain number of points will be designated as “certified” or, greenest of all, “platinum.”

Lois Fagan, Sprint director of product development, says, “We have a self-imposed goal that at least 50 percent of our portfolio of new phones in 2012 will be certified.”

Consumers who want to know which phones are the easiest to repair won’t get much guidance from UL Environment. It will say only whether a device has earned its “certified” or “platinum” designations. It does not say what points were earned for any particular criterion, like ease of removing the external enclosure or the battery, or availability of replacement parts. Nor does it disclose which handsets fail to earn enough points to be certified.

The ability to remove the battery is especially important to frequent phone users, because the original battery may not last the two-year commitment required in a standard contract.

Apple says its iPhone battery is designed to retain up to 80 percent of its original capacity after 400 full charge and discharge cycles. For phones out of warranty, it offers a battery replacement service for $79 if you send the phone to its repair center; shipping costs are extra. (Being without one’s phone is an inconvenience not reflected in the price.)

IFixit provides an alternative. It sells replacement batteries and the necessary tools and offers its free online repair manuals, prepared by fellow users. A replacement battery for the older iPhone 3G model is only $14.95, and there’s no painful parting with the phone in the process.

According to Mr. Wiens, iPhone batteries aren’t hard to replace, with the right screwdriver, available online. “Under five minutes; no technical skills required,” he says.

Even replacing the glass on an iPad 3 can be done by amateurs, he contends, but guidance is needed: “I have a pile of iPad 3s that we broke while trying to learn how to repair them. Last week we finally broke the code.”

IFixit offers manuals covering computers, cameras, game consoles and household appliances, too; its credo is “repair is recycling.”

Hooman Morvarid, president of

CellularDR.com, a repair business that handles phones from many manufacturers, says the most frequent problem he sees is broken glass, followed by a broken LCD screen that sits behind the glass. Increasingly, he says, the glass and LCD are fused together in a way that makes them impossible to separate if one or the other is broken. “So phones are actually becoming more expensive to repair,” he says.

The more that designers of mobile devices avoid fusing parts together, the easier they are to repair. And the repairs most likely to be undertaken are those we can do ourselves.

Randall Stross is an author based in Silicon Valley and a professor of business at San Jose State University. E-mail: stross@nytimes.com.