Privacy violated by border agent’s phone search ???
7/12/2010 at 11:52 AM
It might have prompted an “OMG” from a Dauphin man when Canadian border inspectors searched his cellphone text messages upon his return from purchasing a car in the U.S.
But Derrick Anderson isn’t expressing his surprise with an “LOL.”
Anderson, 21, is angry and considering filing a complaint to the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) after an inspector opened his car, grabbed his cellphone and went through his text messages July 5 at Manitoba’s Emerson crossing on Highway 75.
“He said, ‘I just read your text message — do you want to explain this?’” Anderson said of the inspector.
That search of the phone enabled the CBSA to learn that Anderson had, moments earlier, declared the price of his just-purchased 2006 Dodge Charger Daytona R/T to be a few thousand dollars less than the US$18,750 he had actually paid for it in the Minneapolis area.
He admits to having initially lied about the purchase price of his car to CBSA officers at the border, though he charges that the inspector crossed a privacy line by reaching into his vehicle, taking his cellphone and looking through it. That occurred, Anderson said, while he was in an office at the border and not watching his car.
Full story:
http://www.winnipegsun.com/news/manitoba/2010/07/10/14674896.html