I’ve blogged a lot about the Ninth Circuit’s computer search decision in United States v. Cotterman, and I thought I would flag the cert petition that Cotterman filed on August 5th. Taken in isolation, the cert petition that was filed normally would be denied. But this case may be different for the reason I discussed […]
Archive | Border Search Exception
What is the Ninth Circuit’s Standard for Border Searches Under United States v. Cotterman?
Last Friday the Ninth Circuit decided United States v. Cotterman, a case on the border search exception to the Fourth Amendment. The en banc court held that manually searching for files through a computer is allowed at the border, but that “forensic examination” at the border requires reasonable suspicion. As the Court put it, “a […]
En Banc Ninth Circuit Holds That Computer Forensic Searches Are Like “Virtual Strip Searches” And Require Reasonable Suspicion At the Border
Today the Ninth Circuit handed down its long-awaited en banc decision in United States v. Cotterman, a case on the lawfulness of searching a computer at the border. (My prior posts are here, here, here, and here.) Today the Ninth Circuit announced a special rule for computer searches: Although a “review of computer files” can […]
Ninth Circuit En Banc Argument in United States v. Cotterman
Back in 2009, I first blogged about an interesting Fourth Amendment case, United States v. Cotterman, applying the border search exception to the Fourth Amendment to the search and seizure of computers. In the case, agents seized a computer at the Mexico-Arizona border and wanted to search it under the border search exception to the […]