Problem is, he didn't destroy shit. "He" (by which I mean, technically the agents) deleted a header that's used to encrypt data but can restored from a backup.

> He was charged for destroying evidence, not refusing a search

Evidence with regard to which investigation?

It seems like the best course of action would be to argue he did not destroy evidence, just made it unavailable at the location to force the requirement for a search warrant. It would probably be a hard sell, but I can't think of a better argument (not a lawyer).

> Moreover he would have been in the clear if he just kept his mouth shut.

Although then you get a possible delay of undefined duration, additional questioning and seizure of your device.

"Evidence" of what, exactly? What specific crime did they expect to find evidence of on his phone?

Evidence of what? Destroying evidence assumes he is guilty of a crime which there be evidence of. Our system is predicated on an assumption of innocence. The normal threshold to accuse is a "reasonable, articulable suspicion." This does not meet that criteria.

[flagged]

> None of those words what you think they mean.

And that alone is already a pretty scandalous problem. If the law is not stated in a way that ordinary people can understand, how the hell are they supposed to obey it? Those who cannot afford the highly paid law explainers are basically locked out of society.

The words are actually extremely clear and its exceptionally prudent to quote them, because nobody with a brain can read them and fail see that the government is simply being unconstitutional - all over the place. Even when the people are powerless, we dont have to give up our powers of seeing the truth. Your post and this whole idea that "the words dont mean what they say they mean" is frankly doublespeak of the lowest form.

> None of those words what you think they mean. And fixing that requires basically throwing out the entire system of American jurisprudence. Which would be fine with me, to be honest.

The Constitution is written in plain English. And for the most part, Supreme Court decisions are written in plain English that any reasonably literate US citizen can understand. Yes, the law has technicalities and terms of art just like any other profession.

But one of the most damaging mentalities in modern times is the idea that the common man is incapable of understanding the law at even a basic level. This is flat-out not the case. Which leads to the follow-on problem: people who think lawyers have the ability to cast magic mumbo-jumbo spells that "get their clients off on a technicality" somehow. The best quote I ever heard about that from an attorney was "any time someone says a person 'got off on a technicality,' you can pretty much just safely replace that in your head with 'had their constitutional rights egregiously violated.'"

Yes, there are problems. Qualified immunity is a problem. Prosecutorial misconduct can be a problem. Abuse of discretion at the border is a problem. But that's different from doomerism about the entire justice system to the degree Very Online people express it.

> It's easy to see how a phone border search could be construed as reasonable

I'm curious, is there any case law from the pre digital age regarding people forced to open their briefcase and let the border guard read all their documents at a port of entry?

There is no such exception allowed in the Constitution. And if a case is made that they're not legally in the US yet, then by the same logic, they should not be subject to all the same laws of the US yet.

Even Wikipedia spells out that invasive searches require "reasonable suspicion." So we return to the core question... suspicion of what? Suspicion is not a crime. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception