LAX laptop search heads for appeal on privacy issue

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The Daily Breeze

Saturday, November 11, 2006

LAX laptop search heads for appeal on privacy issue

By Matt Krasnowski
Copley News Service

Michael Arnold appeared disheveled and nervous after he landed at Los Angeles International Airport last year on a flight from the Philippines, so a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer pulled him aside for screening. Officer Laura Peng also noted Arnold was traveling alone, court records state. She found a laptop computer in his luggage and asked him to start it. Stored inside, she said, she found images of him having sex with women, pictures of minors in sexually explicit poses and messages indicating he was trying to procure minors in the Philippines.

The 45-year-old former Anaheim schoolteacher was indicted on a count of transportation of child pornography and a count of child pornography possession. His arrest was heralded as a success for the government's Operation Predator campaign against criminals who prey on children. But last month, a judge threw out the computer evidence against him, setting up a court battle in which a man accused of vile behavior could help determine how far border agents can go in searching people's computers and the future of some privacy rights.

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"While not physically intrusive as in the case of a strip or body cavity search, the search of one's private and valuable personal information stored on a hard drive or other electronic storage device can be just as much, if not more, of an intrusion into the dignity and privacy interests of a person," Pregerson wrote.

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Pregerson's decision conflicts with a 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision last year that deemed a border search of a laptop computer was reasonable and routine. But that case differs from the Arnold case because agents found that man possessed a photo album containing child pornography before they accessed his computer.

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