Homeland Security tried to take WSJ reporter’s phones

A Wall Street Journal reporter was detained by federal agents at the Los Angeles airport who demanded to confiscate her two cell phones, write Frank Pallotta and Jose Pagliery of CNNMoney.com

Pallotta and Pagliery write, “This journalist’s encounter last week highlights a little-known federal policy: Border patrol agents have sweeping powers to search a person — even without ‘reasonable suspicion’ of any crime.

“The policy was set in 2013 when DHS reviewed its own powers and concluded that its agents were clear to search at will.

“Imposing a requirement that officers have reasonable suspicion in order to conduct a border search of an electronic device would be operationally harmful without concomitant civil rights/civil liberties benefits,” it wrote.

The Wall Street Journal’s editor in chief, Gerard Baker, said that the paper is ‘disturbed by the serious incident involving Abi-Habib.’

“‘We have been working to learn more about these events, but the notion that Customs and Border Protection agents would stop and question one of our journalists in connection with her reporting and seek to search her cell phones is unacceptable,’ Baker said in a statement to CNNMoney.”

Read more here.