Data doesn't physically exist. If you're in Mexico (or, for that matter, Africa, or outer space) with a radio transmitter, you can transmit a signal into the US. There is no physical object that crosses the border, not even a wire. There is no practical way to "search" or "detain" such data, because it's not an object, it's information. See also Radio Free Europe etc.
As a practical matter you also can't search data that comes in via terrestrial data networks because the bulk of it is encrypted and the links are too fast for realtime analysis anyway.
And as information, it also has First Amendment protection.
Since excluding information at the border is both un-American and a practical impossibility, there is no valid argument for information crossing the border to have reduced constitutional protection. Any state interest in excluding it cannot be served in that way or at all.
Why does data have to physically exist in order to justify exclusion of its import and export? Within our current understanding of physics, you can’t just transfer data without some kind of physical connection. You can’t just give someone a magic computer so it’s connected to the Internet even if you are in a Faraday cage in North Korea. Radio is an important part of modern wars, so at least in military terms data can certainly be blocked. Encrypted Internet across jurisdictions has certainly made transmission of data easier but it doesn’t mean data can not be meaningfully regulated at the border if the laws wanted it to.
> Within our current understanding of physics, you can’t just transfer data without some kind of physical connection.
Physics theorizes the existence of wormholes that can transfer information point to point. But what physics theorizes is not the point.
Whether or not you could hypothetically construct a Faraday cage around the entire United States to limit international radio communications is not relevant, because it would be prohibitively expensive and blot out the sun.
What matters is what is feasible in practice, taking into account both the physical and economic realities. The internet exists and it will continue to exist as a result of both technical reality and economic necessity. The practical effect is the widespread availability of information teleportation.
Excluding information at the physical border but not over the internet is useless, but excluding it over the internet is both not happening now and infeasible to make happen, so excluding it at the physical border will remain useless and therefore has no justification.
> Data cannot be transmitted or stored but via physical phenomena.
Physical phenomena are not physical objects.
> And such broadcasts are very much not protected from government monitoring.
The government can't monitor their contents when it's encrypted, and in either case can't meaningfully exclude people in the US from receiving the transmissions, which was supposed to be the rationale for the search.
> The government can’t monitor their contents when it’s encrypted
Constitutionally, it can monitor it.
Whether it is able to understand it is a separate question.
Though, yes it can and has accessed the content of encrypted data, whether because the encryption was broken in advance, or later because it recorded the contents and gained the information necessary to penetrate the encryption later, either through cryptanalysis or by other means of gathering intelligence.
> and in either case can’t meaningfully exclude people in the US from receiving the transmissions, which was supposed to be the rationale for the search.
Yes, there are some methods of getting data into the country for which the government’s ability to mitigate the effects of that are more limited, that is neither a legal nor much of a practical argument against mitigations measures where they are practical.
> Whether it is able to understand it is a separate question.
But that question is relevant, because the utility of any monitoring depends on the subject's ability to evade it. There is negligible value in subjecting innocent people to invasive monitoring if actual criminals have an alternate path to unimpeded communications, because the criminals will disproportionately discontinue using the path subject to monitoring, resulting in a disproportionate cost to innocent people without impeding criminal activity.
> Though, yes it can and has accessed the content of encrypted data, whether because the encryption was broken in advance, or later because it recorded the contents and gained the information necessary to penetrate the encryption later, either through cryptanalysis or by other means of gathering intelligence.
No one has ever demonstrated a practical break of AES.
> Yes, there are some methods of getting data into the country for which the government’s ability to mitigate the effects of that are more limited, that is neither a legal nor much of a practical argument against mitigations measures where they are practical.
It implies that other mitigation methods are useless, because anyone transferring contraband can merely switch to the method not subject to monitoring or censorship, if that wasn't where they started because those methods are more efficient than physical transport to begin with. And if something is easily evaded and therefore useless, surely it can justify no exceptional invasion of privacy.
But diverging into a discussion of elemental physics is fundamentally missing the practical difference: Customs and Border Patrol can seize a kilo of heroin. Can they, in actual fact, seize the aether?
> What do you think radio waves transmit through on Earth?
What do you think radio waves transmit through the vacuum of space where there are no electrons? It's energy, not matter.
But that still isn't the point. The point is that the United States does not in fact and could not feasibly in practice block all radio transmissions from outside the United States from reaching people inside it. The First Amendment may prohibit them from doing so even if it was technically feasible, which it also isn't.
The parent comment is clearly referring to a terrestrial border, on Earth.
And in any case humans currently only possess the technology to receive radio waves, even in a hard vacuum, via electrons. So 'Data' that matters to humans is always physical, with tangible non-zero mass, 100% of the time in 100% of all conceivable situations circa 2023.
Radio waves are not made of electrons. They are waves not particles. You cannot put them on a shelf in the evidence room. They do not require matter to transmit through, which is why they still work in the vacuum of space.
But most relevantly, there is no practically feasible barrier you can use to keep them out of your country.
It feels like your not reading my comments thoroughly, or associating non-existant claims to them. No one has said anything about whether radio waves are 'made of electrons' prior to your comment.
Also, what does 'practically feasible' have to do with the parent comment?
A lot of things that are not practically feasible are nonetheless mandated in some form or another, and are still punished for if a transgression is detected via happenstance, there are many examples throughout history.
