Recent weeks have seen several stories about US travellers being denied entry to the country after Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents conducted searches of their mobile telephones revealing information the traveller maybe shouldn’t have had.
While the number of people affected is tiny - CBP says it searched just over 47,000 phones last year, out of the tens of millions of people who entered the US - this is definitely a growing issue.
The key factor in all this appears to be that whatever the immigration status of the traveller, there is no inherent right to refuse a search - with refusal potentially leading to being denied entry to the country, as has been the case in several recent incidents.
However, there are differences in the rights of US citizens, permanent residents and those on visas, with the latter category potentially having fewer rights, as well as differences state by state as to exactly what the CBP can and can’t search.
The bottom line is that if you don’t want CBP to see it, don’t put it on a device you are taking on a trip, or ensure that it is not stored anywhere in the cloud.