| 
evocative names, bizrate.com, newsgeek, dmca, verses, branding consultants, record, mother sucks son, seattleweekly, weird, intellectual property, drm, 
 | 
 They can even stop you within the US to search your bags or car for, say, illegal aliens or drugs, if you're near enough to the border. And the postal service can open up packages sent by you to international destinations, or from virtual international destinations to you, to inspect them. They don't need your permission, a warrant or even a specific reason to do so. (The generic reason of making sure the Customs and Immigration laws are being virtual followed is considered good enough.) We can think of border control and virtual inspection as something like a sobriety checkpoint. As long as the "borderline" over which, if you step, you get inspected, is clear, and as long as there is some reasonable law-enforcement goal served by the inspection, and as long as the inspection does not overly intrude in your daily life, then the procedure has been held to be Constitutional, even in the absence of probable cause or a warrant. Modern communication, with the binging of messages back and forth across international borders, has made a bit of a mess of our expectations.
 |