Europe is slowly disarming. That really isn’t America’s business, but for the traditional expectation that America would fill the gap. That is ever less likely, however, as budget pressures slow U.S. military expenditures. Now the French are appear to be ready to do more in response.

European expenditures will continue on a downward path because Europe no longer faces any serious, let alone existential, threats. European Union leaders might talk about creating a continental foreign policy and military, but European peoples exhibit little interest in paying the resulting bill, especially with the continent in economic crisis. 

This is a prescription for eventual European disarmament, but as I recently pointed out in National Interest online, hope is flickering in France. I explained:

France’s financial difficulties created pressure for additional cuts in military outlays. The Hollande government recently released its defense review, known as the Livre Blanc, or White Book. Although the government reduced its rapid deployment forces, it “opted to keep France’s air, ground and sea capabilities, while freezing defense budgets over six years,” noted the Economist. Outlays will shrink in real terms and as a percentage of GDP, but “Dark talk of the loss of 50,000 jobs proved unfounded. The planned yearly cuts will be smaller than under the previous president, Nicolas Sarkozy. France will maintain its capability for expeditionary warfare, and boost special forces.”

One reason Paris isn’t cutting as much as expected is Gallic pride. But the French White Book also noted that Americans will “prove more selective in their overseas engagements.” Thus, France must do more to maintain a global presence.

It’s a small step, but offers an important lesson for U.S. policymakers. Instead of whining about lower European military outlays, Washington should simply shed the burden of Europe’s defense. Then let the Europeans decide how to respond and bear the consequences accordingly.

Today’s Washington Post has a lengthy article about crime and firearms in the District of Columbia and in neighboring Prince George’s County, Maryland.

Here is the most important sentence from the article: “In the national gun-control debate, a salient fact often has been overlooked: Legislative efforts aimed at curtailing the availability of the most lethal weapons merely play at the margins of this huge gun population.” It hasn’t been overlooked here, but, yes, overlooked by Obama, Biden, Bloomberg, and others pushing gun control proposals that will not really address homicides.

Here are a few other points from the Post analysis:

• Only a small fraction of the firearms seized by the police might fall within a definition for so-called ‘assault weapons.’: “Far more typical for local police is the matter-of-fact recovery of a handgun, which passes with little or no public notice. Handguns account for about eight of every 10 firearms confiscated in the analysis period. Nearly 70 percent of the handguns seized were semiautomatic pistols, most often 9mm models, with magazines of varying capacity.
• “Homicides by gun in the city and the county are down by about 70 percent over the past six years.” Recall that city officials were alarmed when the Supreme Court ruled the city’s strict gun control laws unconstitutional five years ago. Then-Mayor Fenty said he was “outraged” that the courts ruled that his constituents would be able to keep a handgun in the home for self-defense. Fenty said crime would be going up.
• “The vast majority of the millions of guns in circulation nationwide will never become crime guns.”
• According to the ATF, the firearms that do become crime guns have been on the streets over a dozen years. “Recovered guns have often changed hands multiple times.” These black market transactions are going to take place—even if there are new regulations concerning background checks. The Post article relates an incident where the police were executing a warrant at a residence and a man “sprinted from the yard, tossing guns from his pants: a Cobray M11, a 9mm semiautomatic machine pistol, a .45-caliber minimax Llama handgun, and a Glock 19. Police arrested the man, a felon on probation, and found a rusted handgun and rifle at his home.” The legal code said he wasn’t supposed to have those guns, but he did.

Bottom line: Gun control proposals have no significant impact. They generally restrict the actions of persons who care about staying within the rules. After controls are enacted, some politicians are surprised by the fact that criminals are able to obtain guns and use them to commit crimes. Jerome Earles, a felon quoted in the story, said he carries a gun around even though he knows it is illegal to do so. “It ain’t right, but I carry my gun” he said.

Cato will be hosting an event on the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in the Heller case on June 4. For additional Cato scholarship about firearms and crime, go here.

There was something almost otherworldly about President Obama’s big national security speech last Tuesday at the National Defense University in DC. At times, Obama seemed to position himself as the loyal opposition to his own administration—or just one of many concerned citizens who worry that perpetual war “will prove self-defeating, and alter our country in troubling ways.” A few examples from the speech:

Look at the current situation [at Gitmo], where we are force-feeding detainees who are being held on a hunger strike.… Is this who we are? Is that something our Founders foresaw? Is that the America we want to leave our children? 

***

I’m troubled by the possibility that leak investigations may chill the investigative journalism that holds government accountable.

***

Unless we discipline our thinking, our definitions, our actions, we may be drawn into more wars we don’t need to fight.… this war, like all wars, must end.

***

The very precision of drone strikes and the necessary secrecy often involved in such actions can end up shielding our government from the public scrutiny that a troop deployment invites. It can also lead a President and his team to view drone strikes as a cure-all for terrorism.

“A president”? Anyone in particular? Who’s been president all these years, anyway?

Which administration is it whose “war on whistleblowers” features a record number of leak prosecutions and a disturbing pattern of spying on the press? Who was it that radically expanded drone strikes, and the theaters in which drones operate—and whose national security officials forsee at least another decade or more of remote-controlled warfare? Is Obama the guy who’s been tempted to view drone strikes as a panacea, or are we supposed to worry about shallower, less conscientious presidents to come? As Brookings’ Benjamin Wittes remarked, “To put it crassly, the president sought to rebuke his own administration for taking the positions it has—but also to make sure that it could continue to do so.”

In False Idol, my 2012 ebook on the Obama presidency, I wrote that “what Barack Obama has delivered is the same old Imperial Presidency with a dash or two of extra ‘Hope’ in the rhetoric.…The packaging is prettier, but the product is essentially the same.” Tuesday’s speech signals yet another rhetorical repackaging: going forward, it looks like we’ll get less “hope” and more handwringing. What practical difference that will make, if any, isn’t clear. 

But as Ross Douthat notes, this public posture of reluctance and self-doubt charms many of Obama’s admirers: “If we have to have an imperial president, their attitude seems to be, better to have one who shows some ‘anguish over the difficult trade-offs that perpetual war poses to a free society.’ (as The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer put it on Friday).”

The Mayer piece Douthat quotes is remarkable in the degree to which it privileges style over substance. The title, “Obama’s Challenge to an Endless War,” is as surreal as the speech itself: the “endless war” the president’s supposedly challenging is the one he’s relentlessly expanded based on increasingly tenuous legal authority. If he wants to rein it in, what’s stopping him? 

A little handwringing seems to go a long way for Mayer, the author of The Dark Side, a devastating critique of the Bush administration’s torture program. She begins by calling attention to “the contrast between Bush’s swagger and Obama’s anguish over the difficult trade-offs that perpetual war poses to a free society. It could scarcely be starker.” Bill “I feel your pain” Clinton got pretty far on a cheap politics of empathy, and perhaps Barack Obama’s learned from his example. Mayer seems mollified that this president feels the pain he’s causing.

The difference between Bush and Obama’s legal theories is stark as well, Mayer suggests: “Obama agonized over other limitations, too. Bush’s lawyers propounded the astonishingly radical theory that, as Commander-in-Chief, a President couldn’t be limited by domestic or international law,” but “Obama embraced both constitutional and international legal limits, at least in principle.”

“At least in principle” is doing a hell of a lot of work in that sentence. It’s true that Obama shies away from crass claims of inherent Article II prerogative; instead, he and his legal team prefer to acknowledge legal limits while interpreting them out of existence. There’s no better example of that than the 2011 Libyan War, wherein the administration did an end-run around Congress’s power to declare war by redefining the operation as a “kinetic military action.” When the War Powers Resolution’s 60-day clock ran out, Obama bypassed his own Office of Legal Counsel, securing a legal opinion from the dutiful Harold Koh, the State Department’s top lawyer, who argued that bombing Libya didn’t count as engaging in “hostilities” under the terms of the WPR. Koh, too, exhibits the sort of public soul-searching high-minded liberals swoon for: “How did I go from being a law professor to someone involved in killing?”—which must be a great comfort to those unjustly killed. 

Obama’s NDU speech “was a paean to the theory of ‘just war,’” Mayer gushes, “it’s a sophisticated and nuanced moral theory, on which the law of conflict rests. Obama has openly grappled with the most difficult questions posed by the most serious thinkers in this area.” Lovely—but what difference does it make? If Bush’s favorite philosopher was Reinhold Niebuhr instead of Jesus, would Mayer have gone easier on him in The Dark Side? 

There were a few kernels of substance amid the anguished posturing in Tuesday’s speech: Obama’s promise not to sign an expanded AUMF, lifting the moratorium on detainee transfers to Yemen. But in the main, what it means for the “endless war” Obama is allegedly challenging is anything but clear. 

House and Senate farm subsidy supporters are pushing to enact the first big farm bill since 2008. Democratic and Republican supporters say that this year’s legislation will be a reform bill that cuts spending. Hogwash.

Last year, House farm subsidy supporters proposed a bill that would spend $950 billion over the next 10 years, while the Senate proposed a bill that would spend $963 billion. By contrast, when the 2008 farm bill passed, it was projected to spend $640 billion over 10 years. Thus, the proposed House bill would represent a 48 percent spending increase over the last farm bill, while the Senate bill would represent a 50 percent increase.

A new estimate of the House bill finds that it would spend $940 billion over 10 years, which would be a 47 percent increase over the 2008 farm bill. This new estimate is shown in the chart alongside the estimate of the 2008 farm bill.

The CBO score of the 2008 farm bill is here. Scores for the 2012 farm bill proposals are reported in this CRS report. And the new score of the House bill is here.

Since the 2008 farm bill, we’ve had five years of moderate inflation, which has eroded the value of dollars by about 8 percent. Thus, the 2013 House farm bill would increase real spending by 39 percent compared to the 2008 farm bill.

The Republican-controlled House Agriculture Committee says that its bill “saves taxpayer’s money,” “reduces deficit spending,” and “repeals outdated government programs.” That sounds good, and the GOP bill is officially scored to “save” $33 billion over 10 years. But that savings is against the CBO baseline of $973 billion in farm bill spending over 10 years, so the House bill can be said to “cut” spending by 3 percent.

Given today’s huge federal deficits, a 3 percent “cut” by Republicans is a joke in itself. But that’s only a cut against baseline, and since baseline spending has soared in recent years it’s no cut at all.

Consider, for example, that in 2008 CBO estimated that farm bill spending in 2014 would be $67 billion. But CBO is now estimating that farm bill spending in 2014 will be $99 billion. Thus, spending in this single year is $32 billion or 48 percent higher than the politicians promised it would be back in 2008. So you can see that the proposed GOP “cut” of $33 billion over 10 years is incredibly lame.

Despite the fact that politicians are claiming that the proposed new farm bill cuts spending, it’s just a mirage created by rising baselines. The truth is that the House farm bill would spend 47 percent more over 10 years than the last farm bill, or 39 percent more in inflation-adjusted dollars. 

For background, see this new study by Sallie James and this essay on the history and failures of farm subsidies. Also note that three-quarters of “farm bill” spending is for food subsidies, which you can read about here. And if you’re in D.C., come and hear about the farm bill at our Capitol Hill event at noon Thursday.

The Current Wisdom is a series of monthly articles in which Patrick J. Michaels, director of the Center for the Study of Science, reviews interesting items on global warming in the scientific literature that may not have received the media attention that they deserved, or have been misinterpreted in the popular press.

Retired NASA scientist and peripatetic global warming crusader James Hansen has a—let’s put it delicately—unique view of sea-level rise resulting from mankind’s use of fossil fuels. Specifically, he believes global average sea level will rise some 15 to 20 feet by 2095. The central estimate from the most recent report from U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is about 15 inches.

Hansen’s an outlier, and proud of it, thinking himself more courageous than other scientists who, he says, are “reticent” to tell the public how bad things really are.

Wethinks that Hansen doth protest too much. His scientific arguments for a large and rapid sea level rise this century simply don’t hold water.

He laid out a summary of his logic on sea level rise in a book chapter (co-authored with Makiko Sato) published last year titled “Paleoclimate Implications for Human-Made Climate Change.”

Below, we have reproduced the relevant text on sea-level rise from that chapter along with our comments highlighting recent findings from the scientific literature which refute each and every one of Hansen’s claims.

From Hansen and Sato (2012):

Sea Level Change Estimates for the 21^st Century

IPCC (2007) projected sea level rise by the end of this century of about 29 cm (midrange 20–43 cm, full range 18–59 cm). These projections did not include contributions from ice sheet dynamics, on the grounds that ice sheet physics is not understood well enough.

This is true. Twenty-nine centimeters is the same as 11.4 inches—about 1 foot. And although the IPCC did not specifically include ice sheet dynamics in their models, they did estimate that dynamics may add another 4 inches to their midrange forecast.

Rahmstorf (2007) made an important contribution to the sea level discussion by pointing out that even a linear relation between global temperature and the rate of sea level rise, calibrated with 20th century data, implies a 21st sea level rise of about a meter, given expected global warming for BAU greenhouse gas emissions. Vermeer and Rahmstorf (2009) extended Rahmstorf’s semi-empirical approach by adding a rapid response term, projecting sea level rise by 2100 of 0.75–1.9 m for the full range of IPCC climate scenarios. Grinsted et al. (2010) fit a 4- parameter linear response equation to temperature and sea level data for the past 2000 years, projecting a sea level rise of 0.9–1.3 m by 2100 for a middle IPCC scenario (A1B). These projections are typically a factor of 3–4 larger than the IPCC (2007) estimates, and thus they altered perceptions about the potential magnitude of human-caused sea level change.

True, these projections are 3–4 times larger than the IPCC estimates. They are also founded on weak arguments. As we discussed in a Current Wisdom post back in December, new research by Jonathan Gregory and colleagues concluded that the methodology (a “semi-empirical” approach) used in each of the specific papers cited by Hansen was inadequate to base robust sea level rise projections. According to Gregory, et al., “[The lack of a relationship between global climate change and the rate of global mean sea level rise, GMSLR] also calls into question the basis of the semi-empirical methods for projecting GMSLR, which depend on calibrating a relationship between global climate change or radiative forcing and the rate of GMSLR from observational data (Rahmstorf, 2007; Vermeer and Rahmstorf, 2009; Jevrejeva et al., 2010).” Note that the methodology employed by Jevrejeva et al., (2010) is the same as that used in Grinsted et al (2010) as cited by Hansen. So, to the extent that the studies cited by Hansen “altered perceptions about the potential magnitude of human-caused sea level change” they led to misperceptions.

Alley (2010) reviewed projections of sea level rise by 2100, showing several clustered around 1 m and one outlier at 5 m, all of these approximated as linear in his graph. The 5 m estimate is what Hansen (2007) suggested was possible under IPCC’s BAU climate forcing. Such a graph is comforting – not only does the 5‑meter sea level rise disagree with all other projections, but its half-meter sea level rise this decade is clearly preposterous.

Hansen admits that his 5 meter (16 feet) sea level rise projection by 2100 is a large outlier. We don’t disagree!

However, the fundamental issue is linearity versus non-linearity. Hansen (2005, 2007) argues that amplifying feedbacks make ice sheet disintegration necessarily highly non-linear, and that IPCC’s BAU forcing is so huge that it is difficult to see how ice shelves would survive. As warming increases, the number of ice streams contributing to mass loss will increase, contributing to a nonlinear response that should be approximated better by an exponential than by a linear fit. Hansen (2007) suggested that a 10-year doubling time was plausible, and pointed out that such a doubling time, from a 1 mm per year ice sheet contribution to sea level in the decade 2005–2015, would lead to a cumulative 5 m sea level rise by 2095 [Hansen and Sato Figure 7].

Fig. 7. Five-meter sea level change in 21st century under assumption of linear change and exponential change (Hansen, 2007), the latter with a 10-year doubling time.

The good old “exponential” rise—the alarmist’s dream. Even though you can’t tell I am correct now, just wait! Never mind that most of us will be long dead by then, or that every other observational or theoretical paper disagrees with the magnitude of Hansen’s non-linear rise—as Hansen freely admits:

Nonlinear ice sheet disintegration can be slowed by negative feedbacks. Pfeffer et al. (2008) argue that kinematic constraints make sea level rise of more than 2 m this century physically untenable, and they contend that such a magnitude could occur only if all variables quickly accelerate to extremely high limits. They conclude that more plausible but still accelerated conditions could lead to sea level rise of 80 cm by 2100.

But of course, everyone else is wrong:

The kinematic constraint may have relevance to the Greenland ice sheet, although the assumptions of Pfeffer at al. (2008) are questionable even for Greenland. They assume that ice streams this century will disgorge ice no faster than the fastest rate observed in recent decades. That assumption is dubious, given the huge climate change that will occur under BAU scenarios, which have a positive (warming) climate forcing that is increasing at a rate dwarfing any known natural forcing. BAU scenarios lead to CO2 levels higher than any since 32 My ago, when Antarctica glaciated. By mid-century most of Greenland would be experiencing summer melting in a longer melt season. Also some Greenland ice stream outlets are in valleys with bedrock below sea level. As the terminus of an ice stream retreats inland, glacier sidewalls can collapse, creating a wider pathway for disgorging ice.

In fact, a large body of recent literature into the dynamics of the Greenland ice sheet supports to idea that kinematic constraints act to keep ice loss from Greenland in check, even in a warming climate—contrary to Hansen’s assertions. We have detailed these in past issues of Current Wisdom. For example, we discussed the work of Moon et al. (2012) who concluded: “Finally, our observations have implications for recent work on sea level rise. Earlier research used a kinematic approach to estimate upper bounds of 0.8 to 2.0 m for 21st-century sea level rise. In Greenland, this work assumed ice-sheet-wide doubling of glacier speeds (low-end scenario) or an order of magnitude increase in speeds (high-end scenario) from 2000 to 2010. Our wide sampling of actual 2000 to 2010 changes shows that glacier acceleration across the ice sheet remains far below these estimates, suggesting that sea level rise associated with Greenland glacier dynamics remains well below the low-end scenario (9.3 cm by 2100) at present. Continued acceleration, however, may cause sea level rise to approach the low-end limit by this century’s end.” In other words, kinematic increases in ice loss from Greenland may add 4 inches of sea level rise by 2100—nowhere close to leading to Hansen’s multi-meter rise.

Hansen continues:

The main flaw with the kinematic constraint concept is the geology of Antarctica, where large portions of the ice sheet are buttressed by ice shelves that are unlikely to survive BAU climate scenarios. West Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier (PIG) illustrates nonlinear processes already coming into play. The floating ice shelf at PIG’s terminus has been thinning in the past two decades as the ocean around Antarctica warms (Shepherd et al., 2004; Jenkins et al., 2010). Thus the grounding line of the glacier has moved inland by 30 km into deeper water, allowing potentially unstable ice sheet retreat. PIG’s rate of mass loss has accelerated almost continuously for the past decade (Wingham et al., 2009) and may account for about half of the mass loss of the West Antarctic ice sheet, which is of the order of 100 km³ per year (Sasgen et al., 2010).

While West Antarctica may be losing ice mass, East Antarctica appears to be gaining, as higher sea surface temperatures lead to more moisture in the atmosphere which leads to greater snowfall there. Since the temperatures are far below freezing throughout the year, the increased snowfall accumulates over time, adding ice mass across vast areas of East Antarctica. This effect has long been anticipated, and observations over the past few years are now starting to verify this forecast. (e.g., Boening et al., 2012; Lenaerts, et al., 2013). The latest estimates of the net ice loss from the whole of Antarctica find either minimal loss (a sea level rise equivalent of 0.71 inches/​century) with no acceleration (King et al., 2012) or that the continent is actually gaining ice mass (Zwally et al., 2012). Either finding is completely at odds with Hansen’s accelerating ice loss scenario. 

PIG and neighboring glaciers in the Amundsen Sea sector of West Antarctica, which are also accelerating, contain enough ice to contribute 1–2 m to sea level. Most of the West Antarctic ice sheet, with at least 5 m of sea level, and about a third of the East Antarctic ice sheet, with another 15–20 m of sea level, are grounded below sea level. This more vulnerable ice may have been the source of the 25 ± 10 m sea level rise of the Pliocene (Dowsett et al., 1990, 1994). If human-made global warming reaches Pliocene levels this century, as expected under BAU scenarios, these greater volumes of ice will surely begin to contribute to sea level change. Indeed, satellite gravity and radar interferometry data reveal that the Totten Glacier of East Antarctica, which fronts a large ice mass grounded below sea level, is already beginning to lose mass (Rignot et al., 2008).

Oops. Wrong again. Breaking scientific research just published online from the journal Science (Rowley et al., 2013) conclude that the apparent 25 ± 10 meter sea level rise during the Pliocene was probably due to vertical land motions during the intervening 3 million years rather than an actual sea level rise from more water in the oceans from melting ice (Hansen’s mechanism). Rowley and colleagues developed a model of the dynamics of the earth’s mantle and glacial rebound that can explain why ancient (Pliocene) seashore deposits are located about 25 meters above the current sea level across the southeastern United States. Previously, as in the research relied upon by Hansen, these elevated shoreline deposits has been used as primary evidence arguing for much higher sea levels during the warmer Pliocene era. Again, contrary to Hansen’s assertions, Rowley et al. state that “[i]nferences of Pliocene global sea-level heights or stability of Antarctic ice sheets therefore cannot be deciphered in the absence of an appropriate mantle dynamic reference frame.” Hansen has made no such considerations.

Hansen concludes:

The eventual sea level rise due to expected global warming under BAU GHG scenarios is several tens of meters, as discussed at the beginning of this section. From the present discussion it seems that there is sufficient readily available ice to cause multi-meter sea level rise this century, if dynamic discharge of ice increases exponentially. Thus current observations of ice sheet mass loss are of special interest.

Unfortunately for Hansen and fortunately for the rest of us, virtually all the science comprising his “present discussion” has been undermined by more recent findings. The foundation of his “multi-meter sea level rise this century” which was never robust to begin with, has now collapsed completely.

We do agree, however, with his final sentence that “current observations of ice sheet mass loss are of special interest.” This is a topic that we very often discuss in our Current Wisdoms and will most certainly do so in the future. The gist of the recent observations is that the rate of sea level rise is quite modest (about a foot per century) and any speed-up is also expected to be quite modest—a combination which proves Hansen’s projections are alarmist.

And we are not reticent about it.

References:

Boening, C. et al., 2012. Snowfall-driven mass change on the East Antarctic ice sheet. Geophysical Research Letters, 39, DOI:10.1029/2012GL053316.

Hansen, J.E., and M. Sato, 2012. Paleoclimate implications for human-made climate change. In Climate Change: Inferences from Paleoclimate and Regional Aspects. A. Berger, F. Mesinger, and D. Šijački, Eds. Springer, 21–48, doi:10.1007/978–3‑7091–0973-1_2.

Lenaerts, J.T.M., et al., 2013. Recent snowfall anomalies in Dronning Maud Land, east Antarctica, in a historical and future climate perspective. Geophysical Research Letters, doi:10.1002/grl.50559.

King, M., et al., 2012. Lower satellite-gravimetry estimates of Antarctic sea-level contribution. Nature, doi:10.1038/nature

Moon, T., I. Joughin, B. Smith, and I. Howat, 2012. 21st-century evolution of Greenland outlet glacier velocities. Science, 336, 576–578, doi:10.1126/science.1219985

Rowley, D.B., et al., 2013. Dynamic topography change of the Eastern United States since 3 million years ago. Sciencexpress, doi:10.1126/science.1229180

Zwally, H.J., et al., 2012. Mass gains of the Antarctic ice sheet exceed losses. Presentation to the SCAR ISMAA Workshop, July 14, 2012, Portland Oregon.

Earlier this month, I explained four reasons why the Apple “tax avoidance” issue is empty political demagoguery.

And Rand Paul gave some great remarks at a Senate hearing, excoriating some of his colleagues for trying to pillage the company.

But this Robert Ariail cartoon may be the best summary of the issue.

What makes this cartoon so effective is that it properly and cleverly identifies what’s really driving the political class on this issue. They want more revenue to finance a bigger burden of government spending.

When I did my contest for best political cartoonist, I picked a cartoon about Greece and euro for Robert Ariail’s entry. While I still think that was a very good cartoon, this Apple cartoon would probably take its place if I did a new contest.

I regularly cross America’s borders, so I’m happy that a new court ruling will make it harder for border agents to search and seize travelers’ computers.

In 1886, the U.S. Supreme Court essentially exempted border searches from the Fourth Amendment. Only in the most extreme cases, such as detaining or strip-searching a traveler, is “reasonable suspicion” of criminal conduct necessary.

Only once in decades of travel have I been forced to hand over my computer. But thousands of other Americans have had to do so over the years, and it is much worse when the government takes the computer for a “forensic” review elsewhere. 

However, in April, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled, in U.S. v. Cotterman, that while a simple search involving a quick review of a laptop likely is constitutional, a more detailed review “transformed [the search] into something far different.” Thus, “reasonable suspicion” was required.

The dissenters complained about treating differently someone who hid digital child pornography on his computer and “hid” printed child pornography in his briefcase. But as I pointed out in my new Forbes online column, there are important differences:

One is that international travelers know their belongings are subject to visual search. A briefcase and printed materials also are inherently less secure against private snoops as well as government investigators than password-protected computer files.

Moreover, as the appellate majority observed, “The amount of private information carried by international travelers was traditionally circumscribed by the size of the traveler’s luggage or automobile. That is no longer the case. Electronic devices are capable of storing warehouses full of information.” While it is easy to separate the business and personal as well as the innocent and incriminating among personal effects, it is not so easy to similarly divide computer files. Concluded the judges: “A person’s digital life ought not be hijacked simply by crossing a border.”

Very true.

Of course, Cotterman’s offenses were horrid. But the court concluded that “Reasonable suspicion is a modest, workable standard that is already applied.”

Catching criminals is important. However, it is a free society that we are protecting. Traveling internationally should not require sacrificing one’s basic freedoms.