The Ninth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals held that U.S. Customs officers do not need reasonable suspicion or cause to search the contents of any person’s laptop computer at the U.S. borders.

The case involves Michael Arnold, whose laptop was searched routinely by a U.S. Customs official upon his return to the U.S. from the Philippines in 2005. The Customs official asked Arnold to start his computer and then browsed through it; the official found some images of what he thought were child pornography on the laptop and in several storage devices Arnold had with him.

A grand jury later indicted Arnold, and he was charged with knowingly transporting child pornography in interstate and foreign commerce, and for knowingly possessing a hard drive and CD-ROMs containing more than one image of child pornography.

Arnold filed a Motion to Suppress the evidence against him on the grounds that the initial search of his computer and storage devices by Customs officers were unreasonable and without cause, grounds normally guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution.

The U.S. District Court ruled in Arnold’s favor on the grounds that reasonable suspicion was required before Customs officials could randomly search through Arnold's computer. The U.S. Government then filed an appeal against that decision, arguing that reasonable suspicion standards do not apply to searches at the border.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Arnold’s arguments that reasonable suspicion was required to search a computer. It also rejected Arnold's argument that a higher level of suspicion was required for computer searches at the border because of the risk of "expressive material" being exposed in such searches. The court wrote that generally, "searches made at the border . . . are reasonable simply by virtue of the fact that they occur at the border."