Other "Clean" phone at international border crossing.

[americafirst]

Fairly interesting evolution of my original post. Informative. I note that for some people I am suspicious solely for the fact that I would not like government agents to examine and possibly store the information on my smart phone. I would have assumed that everyone would have been protective of individual privacy on principle.

I'm not accusing you of being suspicious. My goal is to make law enforcement's job not easy and I say that as a Federal Law Enforcement Officer

The authors of the US Constitution felt privacy was an inherent right. That's the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution in the Bill of Rights. One of the bases for the American Revolution was infringement on privacy (warrantless search and seizure).

My understanding is that the 4A is limited at ports of entry due to tax reasons. If that's true or not I don't know but I have no idea what information on a smartphone has to do with tax. Someone told me they don't need probable cause at a port of entry or within 100 miles of a land or water border but they do need suspicion. There is the child pornography angle which Customs and Border Protection among other federal law enforcement agencies enforces but I would like to think people would be smart enough not to have anything like that on their phone but I have met some low IQ criminals in my time. This led me to think what would happen with my agency issued device at a port of entry so I will ask some Customs & Border Protection people I know

It appears that some people are not concerned about privacy on principle.

Privacy is important to me and that is why I make law enforcement's job harder

Maybe. But with all that is happening in the world today there are a lot of things that could have a much more significant impact on your life than having your phone examined. And anyway, what can you do about it? It's not like the policy is going to change without a lot of work. You can spend time worrying about your phone, but one goal of vacation travel is to get away from things, relax, forget your worries for a short while. All that time spent in this thread worrying about what the government might do could have been spent instead in planning for your trip. Why focus on the negative (which you can't control) when there are so many positive things that can be uplifting?

While this is true it's the principal. On Cyber Monday I purchased multiple AR lowers because they were on sale and it triggered a red flag with ATF and they called wanting to know about them. I refused to answer their questions because I did nothing wrong so they came to my house. I refused to speak to them without a warrant which they later got and I then showed them the lowers which I purchased. They verified that I still had them and they checked the serial numbers against the form. The whole process took about 15 minutes but it is the principal. While I am a Federal Law Enforcement Officer I do take my rights seriously and I understand why others would as well