Matthew Feeney for the Cato Institute: Thanks to the “border exception” to the Fourth Amendment, Customs and Border Protection officers do not need reasonable suspicion or probable cause to search electronic devices at airports.
That regrettable power made headlines last year after CBP officers searched phones belonging to innocent American citizens. CBP has updated its electronic device search policy via a new directive. While the directive does include a welcome clarification, it states that CBP can search anyone’s electronic devices without probable cause or reasonable suspicion. …
Searches of electronic devices at the border are on the rise. According to CBP’s own figures, the number of international travelers processed with electronic device searches in fiscal 2017 increased almost 60 percent from fiscal 2016. While the number of travelers subjected to the searches represents a small fraction of total international travelers, it’s clear that the warrantless searches have targeted innocent Americans and are unlikely to stop. At a time when the smartphone is an increasingly integral part of modern life, containing most of our intimate and private details, this authority is of acute concern. …
CBP officers should have to secure a warrant before scouring our most intimate communications and details. The Supreme Court held in Riley v. California in 2014 that police cannot search the digital information found on phones belonging to arrested persons without a warrant. In a brief filed in the case, the U.S. argued that searching information on phones is “materially indistinguishable” from searching wallets and purses. In his Riley v. California majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts correctly characterized that argument as “like saying a ride on horseback is materially indistinguishable from a flight to the moon.”
Compton gets a bad rap Jenny Muñiz for New America: The city of Compton, Calif., has a secure place in the nation’s imagination. Its esteemed anthems have periodically thrust the “Hub City” into the national spotlight. For a refresh, just listen to N.W.A’s unapologetic 1998 hit “Straight Outta Compton” and Kendrick Lamar’s 2012 track “Compton.” These odes to my hometown tell the story of an optimistic city, albeit a city navigating poverty, crime, segregation, police brutality, and corruption. But like many other urban centers, Compton is dynamic and ever-evolving. Its topography, demographics, economic condition, and needs are different today than what they once were.
It may come as a surprise that nowadays Compton is a quiet city comprised of modest-family homes and tree-lined streets. From street to street, the scenery changes only subtly: often to narrower streets lined with fenced lawns and barred windows. Other times, to semi-rural roads populated by unlikely neighbors: horses, goats, and roosters. And due to the equestrian zones within the city, it is not unlikely to come across black and Latino urban cowboys galloping along Rosecrans Avenue.
The stereotype of Compton as a city teeming with violence and crime continues to hold wide currency, but the city’s crime rates are much lower today than they were in the turbulent 1980s and 1990s. In fact, last year Compton experienced a 4.7 percent decrease in overall violent crime, including a 37.1 percent decrease in the number of homicides. In the same period, the city experienced a demographic shift. By 2010, Latinos made up 65 percent of the city’s 100,000 residents and 79 percent of the students in Compton schools.
Time for Democrats to embrace Medicare for all Jacob Hacker for the Century Foundation: If the troubled saga of the Obamacare exchanges tells us anything, it’s that even the most technically sound policy will fall short if it does not generate and sustain pressure for continuing expansion and improvement. Successful policies do not just reflect the politically possible; they reshape it.
I don’t think the public option is robust enough to create such pressure, even though it would do much good. As a rallying cry, “Make Medicare available to the 12 million people buying insurance through the [Affordable Care Act] marketplaces” leaves much to be desired. Instead, the message should be simpler and bolder: “Make Medicare available to everyone.” All Americans should be guaranteed good coverage under Medicare if they don’t receive it from their employer or Medicaid.
To achieve this goal, a new part of Medicare would need to be created for those not already covered by the program. I’ve been calling this new component “Medicare Part E” (for “everyone”) — a term that’s been used before by Johns Hopkins’s Gerard Anderson and others. Medicare Part E would cover the broad range of benefits covered by Medicare Parts A (hospital coverage), B (coverage of physicians’ and other bills) and D (drug coverage).
The central feature of Medicare Part E is guaranteed insurance. All Americans would be presumed to be covered. They would not need to go through complicated eligibility processes or hunt down coverage that qualified for public support or even re-enroll on an annual basis. …
Thus, the centerpiece of Medicare Part E is the same as that of single-payer: a guarantee that Medicare is there for everyone. Unlike single-payer, however, Medicare Part E seeks to improve employers’ role rather than replace it. It does so by establishing new standards for employment-based plans and requiring that all employers contribute to Medicare if they do not provide insurance directly to their employees.
