Attorney-client confidentiality is one of the oldest pillars of American justice. Americans not only have a right to talk with a lawyer, but also to talk privately with the lawyer. After all, what good would it be to ask for legal advice if the police could use that conversation against you?
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) asserts a very different principle: that your privacy rights disappear at the border. CBP policy gives officers the right to seize and search any electronic device that passes through customs. While the agency claims that copies of any attorney-client documents will be "destroyed" after a search, it doesn't recognize limits on its ability to collect and copy those documents in the first place.
Detroit lawyer Amir Makled got a glimpse of that policy in action while coming back from a family beach vacation in the Dominican Republic on Sunday. As first reported by the Detroit Free Press, agents held Makled for 90 minutes at the airport while they demanded to go through his phone. Eventually, he let them look at his contacts list, though he wouldn't tell them whether specific people were his friends, relatives, or clients.
