Court Opinion

ID: 9569110
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 20:10:40.955553+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:48:59.987637
License: Public Domain

KOZINSKI, Chief Judge,
dissenting:
The Fourth Amendment guarantees “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects .... ” The reference to papers is not an accident; it’s not a scrivener’s error. It reflects the Founders’ deep concern with safeguarding the privacy of thoughts and ideas — what we might call freedom of conscience — from invasion by the government. Because my colleagues in the majority don’t see this right as very important, they authorize the government to read every scrap of paper that crosses our borders, whether in a pocket or purse, a package, suitcase or envelope. My concurring colleagues don’t recognize this right at all, and thus give customs agents free rein to conduct whatever search they please, for whatever reasons they choose, unless they destroy property or invade the body.
But the Founders were as concerned with invasions .of the mind as with those of the body, the home or personal property— which is why they gave papers equal rank in the Fourth Amendment litany. The sum and substance of today’s opinion is that we remove papers as an independent sphere of constitutional protection, treating them simply as a species of effects. Because our commission as federal judges does not authorize us to blue-pencil words written by the Founding Fathers, I respectfully dissent.
My colleagues cite various cases that ostensibly help them, but none are on point. United States v. Ramsey, on which both the majority and concurrence rely, does not go nearly as far as my colleagues would have it. What the Supreme Court held there is that envelopes are no more immune from border searches than any *1015other package; containers of any size and kind can be opened at the border and inspected for contraband that might be concealed inside. 431 U.S. 606, 97 S.Ct. 1972, 52 L.Ed.2d 617 (1977). The case involved a search of envelopes whose shape and bulk suggested contraband, not correspondence. Id. at 609, 97 S.Ct. 1972. The case did not involve reading anything within the envelopes, nor did it involve an effort to obtain evidence of criminal activity unconnected to the customs laws. Ramsey treated mailed envelopes as effects because they were simply containers being searched for smuggled items. The Court therefore expressly declined to say anything about the government’s authority to read private papers. Id. at 623-24, 97 S.Ct. 1972.
Nor is United States v. Flores-Montano of any great help. 541 U.S. 149, 124 S.Ct. 1582, 158 L.Ed.2d 311 (2004). The Court reiterated the general rule of Ramsey that any container crossing the border — there, a vehicle’s gas tank — can be searched for contraband without suspicion, noting possible exceptions for unduly intrusive searches that affect the “dignity and privacy interests of the person being searched,” id. at 152, 124 S.Ct. 1582, as well as searches that are unduly destructive of property, id. at 155-56, 124 S.Ct. 1582. It’s far from clear that this list of exceptions is exhaustive — it certainly doesn’t purport to be — but even if it were, I should think that having perfect strangers rummage through one’s diary, personal correspondence, medical prescriptions or other private writings would seriously harm one’s “dignity and privacy interests.”
The cases dealing with suspicionless border searches are all about intercepting contraband that is being carried across the border right there and then; essentially, they are all container cases. To be sure, the containers sometimes take an unusual form — a gas tank, a spare tire, a pocket or briefcase, even a body cavity. See, e.g., Flores-Montano, 541 U.S. 149, 124 S.Ct. 1582, 158 L.Ed.2d 311; United States v. Cortez-Rocha, 394 F.3d 1115 (9th Cir.2005); United States v. Duncan, 693 F.2d 971 (9th Cir.1982); United States v. Montoya de Hernandez, 473 U.S. 531, 541, 105 S.Ct. 3304, 87 L.Ed.2d 381 (1985). But the purpose of all these searches is the interdiction of prohibited or dutiable items concealed within the package that is crossing the border. Using border searches for a purpose unrelated to border control — such as general crime prevention — raises a wholly different issue.
Imagine that the federal government decided to read every letter, every e-mail, every diary, every document that crosses our borders, in order to increase the overall level of law enforcement by investigating crimes mentioned or documented in these writings. This would not be an effort to secure our borders — in fact, it would have nothing at all to do with the borders, except that the evidence would be collected there. This kind of operation raises very different Fourth Amendment concerns than those the Supreme Court dealt with in Ramsey, Flores-Montano or any of the other cases my colleagues cite. It’s the very maneuver we condemned almost twenty years ago in United States v. $124,570 U.S. Currency: using a search justified for one purpose (such as airline security or protection of the borders) to achieve a totally unrelated objective (general law enforcement). 873 F.2d 1240 (9th Cir.1989). Ten years later, in United States v. Bulacan, we reiterated that “courts must take care to ensure that[a suspicionless contraband] search is not subverted into a general search for evidence of crime,” emphasizing the “vast potential for abuse” and intrusion “into the privacy of ordinary citizens.” 156 F.3d 963, 967 (9th Cir.1998). Today, these admonitions are forgotten.
*1016There can be no doubt that the officers here saw their mission as far more than intercepting contraband: They viewed themselves as law enforcement officers in the full sense of the term, and their mission as detecting evidence of all criminal activity. Tom LeBlanc, a supervisory customs inspector, filed a declaration explaining the inspectors’ modus operandi:
The usual protocol is for Customs inspectors to open and inspect for evidence of a violation of law (such as failing to declare certain amounts of monies), or for articles that are prohibited from export (such as weapons of mass destruction, illegal narcotics, etc). In inspecting the packages, Customs inspectors adopt a two-tier approach. First, they scan, not read, any documents. If something during their scan gives them reasonable suspicion to suspect a violation of law, the inspectors give a closer inspection to the contents of the package. If the package does not appear to violate the law or create any type of reasonable suspicion, the contents of the package are repackaged and the package is then returned to the sorting process for loading onto the appropriate international airplane.
Inspector LeBlanc makes it clear that failure to declare currency is only an example of a “violation of law” for which the inspectors are on the lookout. He then speaks generally of deriving reasonable suspicion of a “violation of law” from scanning the text of any documents in the packages. Inspector Oliva, who searched Seljan’s first package, was even more explicit: “We are looking for anything that’s related to contraband being shipped out of the country or anything that’s contrary to law.”
The way the customs inspectors dealt with Seljan’s package further proves that the search was designed to sweep far beyond intercepting contraband currency or preventing the exportation of WMDs. Even if one can buy into the fatuous notion that Inspector Oliva believed that Seljan’s letter, headed by a Calvin and Hobbes cartoon, was actually a disguised bearer bond or the blueprint for a dirty bomb, the inspector’s initial scan revealed nothing at all to support any such a suspicion. Rather, what raised the inspector’s hackles was the inference that the writer of the letter may have been engaged in criminal activity unrelated to the customs laws. Even his thorough read didn’t reveal enough to establish probable cause or make an arrest; there was just enough to open up a file on the writer and start an investigation of a crime that had nothing to do with customs control. A similar file and investigation could be opened up on any one of us, if words we put in a personal letter or e-mail raise the suspicions of some faceless apparatchik.
The government makes much of the fact that the customs agents use a two-step procedure — first scanning the documents, then reading them — and my colleagues in the majority take comfort in this. (My colleagues in the concurrence see it as a needless delay, as they are satisfied to have government agents read every scrap of paper and every electronic document that crosses our borders.) But the two-step procedure should give us no comfort at all: How else would the agents decide which documents to read? There are too few agents and too little time for them to read every word. The sensible thing to do is to scan each document and see if something suspicious pops out; if it does, they go back and read the whole thing. The two-step procedure is not, as they say in computer parlance, a bug — it’s a feature: It enables experienced law enforcement agents to read the maximum number of documents likely to yield evidence of crime. The procedure certainly doesn’t keep them from reading whatever they want to read, and our approval of it is a green light for customs agents to go on *1017fishing expeditions through all private papers and electronic documents that are sent or carried across our national borders.
Which brings us back to the Fourth Amendment’s explicit reference to papers as an object of solicitude. Had the Founders meant to treat documents like other kinds of property, they would have had no reason to refer specifically to papers. Papers are personal property and thus would have been covered by the Fourth Amendment’s reference to effects. What makes papers special — and the reason they are listed alongside houses, persons and effects — is the ideas they embody, ideas that can only be seized by reading the words on the page.
The constitutional text reflects the Founding generation’s fear and suspicion of government agents seizing and reading private papers, sentiments stirred up by the Wilkes affair of the 1760s. Eric Schnapper, Unreasonable Searches and Seizures of Papers, 71 Va. L.Rev. 869, 884-89 (1985); see also Thomas Y. Davies, Recovering the Original Fourth Amendment, 98 Mich. L.Rev. 547, 561-67 (1999). Trying to develop a seditious libel case against opposition leader John Wilkes and his supporters, the British government seized papers from the homes of the suspects on a general warrant. Davies, 98 Mich. L.Rev. at 562. Wilkes and others sued, and a series of British cases held the searches and seizures illegal under English common law. Schnapper, 71 Va. L.Rev. at 876, 912-13.
As the Wilkes affair unfolded in England, the colonists followed it with fervent interest: Colonial newspapers in the 1760s and 1770s were filled with accounts of the Wilkes trials; towns and children were named after Wilkes; “Wilkes and Liberty” became a patriot slogan. Id. at 876 & n. 38; Pauline Maier, John Wilkes and American Disillusionment with Britain, 20 Wm. & Mary Q. 373, 375 (1963). The colonists hailed the cases condemning the searches as a major vindication of their personal liberties. Schnapper, 71 Va. L.Rev. at 876 n. 38; Davies, 98 Mich. L.Rev. at 564-65 & n. 22.
The most famous case, Entick v. Car-rington, rejected the government’s claim of unrestrained power to search personal papers as “exorbitant,” stressing the owner’s strong privacy interest: “Papers are the owner’s ... dearest property; and are so far from enduring a seizure, that they will hardly bear an inspection.” 19 Howell’s State Trials 1029, 95 Eng. Rep. 807 (1765). Because of Entick’s influence on the Founding generation, the Supreme Court has long used it as a guide in interpreting the Fourth Amendment. As the Court explained in Boyd v. United States, “every American statesman, during our revolutionary and formative period as a nation, was undoubtedly familiar with this monument of English freedom, and considered it as the true and ultimate expression of constitutional law ... sufficiently explanatory of what was meant by unreasonable searches and seizures.” 116 U.S. 616, 626-27, 6 S.Ct. 524, 29 L.Ed. 746 (1885) overruled on other grounds by Warden v. Hayden, 387 U.S. 294, 87 S.Ct. 1642, 18 L.Ed.2d 782 (1967); see also Brower v. County of Inyo, 489 U.S. 593, 596, 109 S.Ct. 1378, 103 L.Ed.2d 628 (1989).
Entick and the other Wilkes cases reflect a very different attitude towards the privacy of thoughts and ideas than that of my colleagues here, who dismiss the reading of personal correspondence as “nothing like an intrusive body search,” maj. op. at 1006. The prevailing party in Entick and the most prominent commentators on the Wilkes affair considered the search of private papers every bit as intrusive as a body search. The plaintiff in Entick described the search as “worse than the *1018Spanish inquisition,” and compared reading a man’s private correspondence to “racking his body to come at his secret thoughts.” 19 Howell’s State Trials 1029, 95 Eng. Rep. 807. The most prominent political pamphlet on the Wilkes affair, widely read in both England and the colonies, described these searches in similar terms:
Every body has some private papers, that he would not on any account have revealed. A lawyer hath frequently the papers and securities of his clients; a merchant or agent, of his correspondents. What then, can be more excruciating torture, than to have [government agents] ... amuse themselves with the perusal of all private letters, memorandums, secrets and intrigues.... [WJould any gentleman in this kingdom rest one minute at ease in his bed, if he thought, that ... every secret of his family [was] made subject to the inspection of a whole Secretary of State’s Office?
Father of Candor, A Letter Concerning Libels, Warrants, the Seizure of Papers, and Sureties for the Peace or Behaviour; with a View to some late Proceedings and the Defence of Them by the Majority 54-55 (5th ed. London 1765).
Another prominent political pamphlet agreed that the searches violated fundamental rights, stressing the privacy interest in papers. Papers contain people’s most personal information, the writer explained, “sealed up in silence, not to be broke, but with their own heart-strings,” so that “some men would rather die” than submit to having their papers searched. A Letter to the Right Honourable the Earls of Egremont and Halifax, His Majesty’s Principal Secretaries of State, on the Seizure of Papers 8-9 (London 1763). Has our regard for privacy deteriorated so precipitously since the time of the Founders?
The Founding generation recognized that the seizure of private papers also undermines freedom of speech. The author of the Letter to Egremont and Halifax feared that the searches would mean “an end of confidence amongst mankind. A severe restraint is laid upon friendship and correspondence, and even upon the freedom of thought.” Id. at 25. Father of Candor expressed the same concerns. As long as such searches were allowed, he lamented, Englishmen “must enjoy our correspondencies, friendships, papers and studies ... at the will and pleasure of ... inferior agents!” Father of Candor, supra, at 59. Story later described, in similar terms, the chill on speech that would result from failing to protect personal correspondence. It would, he explained, “compel every one in self-defence to write even to his dearest friends with the cold and formal severity with which he would write to his wariest opponents or his most implacable enemies.” Joseph Story, Commentaries on Equity Jurisprudence 251 (Boston, Little, Brown and Co., 13th ed. 1886).
The Supreme Court recognized in Ramsey that allowing customs agents to read personal correspondence in border searches would raise a serious First Amendment issue. The Court did not reach the question only because the applicable “postal regulations flatly prohibited], under all circumstances, the reading of correspondence absent a search warrant.” 431 U.S. at 623-24, 97 S.Ct. 1972. The majority, in a footnote, declines to “consider any potential violation of the First Amendment.” Maj. op. at 1003 n. 8. But Ramsey suggests that these “First Amendment considerations” are highly relevant in a case like ours, where customs agents read personal letters without a warrant or even reasonable suspicion. 431 U.S. at 623-24, 97 S.Ct. 1972.
The Founding generation also saw the seizure of private papers as undermining *1019the right against self-incrimination. Father of Candor complained that seizing a man’s papers to build a criminal case against him “would be making a man give evidence against and accuse himself, with a vengeance.” Father of Candor, supra, at 56. The author of the Letter to Egremont and Halifax agreed that the searches were functionally the same as compelled self-incrimination: It could not be that “though a man’s tongue is not permitted to bear testimony against him, his thoughts are to rise in judgment, and to be produced as witnesses to prove the charge.” A Letter to Egremont and Halifax, supra, at 20. The Supreme Court has recognized these concerns, condemning suspicionless searches and compelled production of private papers as unduly intrusive. United States v. Doe, 465 U.S. 605, 104 S.Ct. 1237, 79 L.Ed.2d 552 (1984) (government cannot compel production of self-incriminating documents); Go-Bart Importing Co. v. United States, 282 U.S. 344, 51 S.Ct. 153, 75 L.Ed. 374 (1931) (government cannot conduct a general exploratory search of papers in the hope that evidence of a crime may be found). To my colleagues, they count for nothing.
The majority’s reluctance to step between Mr. Seljan and his well-merited punishment is understandable. Seljan’s long career of “sexually educating” children is heinous; it’s difficult to regret that he will spend the rest of his life in prison. But this result comes at a high price: allowing serious invasions into the privacy of millions of Americans, innocent as well as guilty. The previously “narrow” border search exception, United States v. Sutter, 340 F.3d 1022 (9th Cir.2003), is now a gaping hole. Every envelope containing birthday cards or trade secrets, every email, every diary, every laptop that crosses the border can be opened and its contents read by government agents, without a warrant or even founded suspicion. Worse yet, by treating these seizures as a trivial annoyance rather than a major intrusion into our freedom of thought, my colleagues open the door for police across the United States to read whatever private papers fall into their hands. This is the power the English government claimed in the Wilkes affair; the power that so outraged the colonists; the power the Fourth Amendment was built to shield us against. We sell this birthright very cheaply today.