[jay-barronville]

As someone who supported the current administration primarily due to their stated position on protecting free speech and fighting censorship, I find this story disgusting. I consider our First Amendment here in the U.S. to be the best and most unique thing about our country. I hated watching previous administrations step all over it, but in my opinion, the current administration is already proving to be objectively worse for the simple fact that they pretended to actually care about free speech only to pretty quickly start cracking down on speech they don’t like (e.g., see the Mahmoud Khalil and Rümeysa Öztürk cases—Öztürk’s case, in particular, is extremely egregious). As frustrating as it was when the Biden regime was cracking down on speech they didn’t like, at least they didn’t pretend to actually care about free speech. Running on a free speech platform and then implementing North Korea-style speech policies is such a massive betrayal.

On a separate note, border agents being able to force you (anyone, including U.S. citizens) to give them access to your devices has been a problem for a long time and certainly should be illegal. When traveling internationally, you should either (1) leave your personal devices behind or (2) back up your personal devices to an encrypted drive (a tiny SD Card is ideal) and factory reset them. I know the EFF has been fighting that issue for a while and I’m hoping that at some point in the near future, border agents will be prohibited from forcing folks to give access to their devices.