Do You Live In The Constitution-Free Zone Of The US?

by Mike Masnick
Techdirt
Feb. 13, 2013

Earlier this week, we wrote about the latest defense by Homeland Security of their laptop search policies that (they claim) give them broad coverage to search laptops within 100 miles of the border. The latest bit of news was that an internal review found that there was minimal benefits to one's civil liberties in not searching their laptops, so it was okay (think about that sentence for a bit).

The 100 mile "buffer zone" part of that story gets most of the attention, but it isn't a new thing. They've been claiming that for a while. It's just that this is yet another attempt by them to give themselves additional support for those kinds of searches. In our comments, someone pointed us to a useful (and horrifying) map that the ACLU put together highlighting just how much of our country is within 100 miles of border/coastline, creating the Constitution-Free Zone Map -- which happens to cover about 2/3 of all American citizens.

Click through for the ACLU's interactive version. This isn't a new map, and, no one is claiming that these regions don't have any Constitutional protections, but it does effectively make the point of just how incredibly ridiculous it is for them to make these claims when it comes to laptop searches, which were already questionable enough at the border, let alone 100 miles into the country.