U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have “near-unfettered authority to search and seize travelers’ devices at the border.”
The agencies’ policies allow officers to search devices for general law enforcement purposes, such as investigating and enforcing bankruptcy, environmental, and consumer protection laws. The agencies also say that they can search and seize devices for the purpose of compiling “risk assessments” or to advance pre-existing investigations. The policies even allow officers to consider requests from other government agencies to search specific travelers’ devices.
Check It Out: U.S. Border Patrol Has ‘Near-Unfettered’ Authority to Search and Seize Devices
It’s worth noting that any location in the US within 100 miles of the border is within CBP jurisdiction. So their policies potentially affect nearly 2/3 of the population:
https://www.aclu.org/other/constitution-100-mile-border-zone
While there are stricter limits on what they can do outside of an actual border crossing, according to the linked piece (and based on local reports I hear from living near the scary Canadian border) they’re not great about adhering to those limits.
When the police are above the law, then who polices the police.
Guess next I go abroad I’ll use my 4S