<story><title>Australian Border Force searched phones of 10k travellers in past two years</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jun/11/australian-border-force-abf-searching-phones-travellers-data</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>zensavona</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ll just add a couple of details here since I have had this happen to me multiple times...&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m an Australian citizen and this applies just as much to me as a foreigner (for whom although I disagree about, I could make a reasonable argument for this being valid). Police require a warrant and&amp;#x2F;or reasonable suspicion of having committed a specific crime to search any part of you or your belongings. Border Force do not require this.&lt;p&gt;When they ask for the code, they will either:&lt;p&gt;- just open your device and rifle through your photos and messages in front of you, asking questions like &amp;quot;got a lot of photos of x, what&amp;#x27;s that about?&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;who is y?&amp;quot;, ask you questions like &amp;quot;what are you doing in Australia? Who are you seeing? What&amp;#x27;s your relationship to them?&amp;quot; et cetera (even to me, a citizen who spends majority of my time abroad).&lt;p&gt;- Take it into another room for 20mins or so and presumably take a dump of the whole thing for further analysis. I once asked &amp;quot;what is done with this data and how long is it stored&amp;quot; and they refused to answer the question.&lt;p&gt;One time after refusing to hand over the code (politely) I was treated pretty aggressively, had my whole body searched (not strip searched, groped well all over), all my luggage taken apart etc. I received a letter in the mail that I could go and collect my phone at the airport after around 3 weeks. It seems unlikely they have some tech which allows exfiltration of data from a locked iPhone(?) so I&amp;#x27;m not sure what that&amp;#x27;s about. They claimed to me that they do indeed have this capability.&lt;p&gt;Since refusing to open the phone and letting them keep it I seem to be on some kind of list and have had a Border Force officer meet me at the baggage carousel a couple of times with the &amp;quot;please come with me sir&amp;quot; to my own private search area where a few of them are ready to search my luggage inside out. This seems to happen less recently since I have just given them the code. They have successfully made it inconvenient enough for me to comply.&lt;p&gt;One time years ago they did the same thing with my laptop. Since that incident they have only asked about my phone.</text></comment>
<story><title>Australian Border Force searched phones of 10k travellers in past two years</title><url>https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/jun/11/australian-border-force-abf-searching-phones-travellers-data</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>cletus</author><text>Story time: when I worked at Google we had a specific policy for traveling to and from China. IIRC it went something like this:&lt;p&gt;1. You absolutely aren&amp;#x27;t allowed to take your regular phone and laptop;&lt;p&gt;2. You will be given loaner devices to take into China;&lt;p&gt;3. If you&amp;#x27;re asked to open such devices on entry, comply and then, when you can, inform IT;&lt;p&gt;4. Once you got back, I&amp;#x27;m not sure what happened to those devices. I believe they were in the very least wiped. They may even have been destroyed in certain circumstances (eg if a border official examined the open device). But that&amp;#x27;s speculation.&lt;p&gt;I never travelled to China so never used this. A colleague who regularly traveled to China told me some stories about this.&lt;p&gt;But yes it does seem prudent to wipe your device and restore when you land. Then again, border officials can also deny you entry with very little justification so who knows?</text></comment>