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A Canadian woman was issued a lifetime ban from entering the U.S. after officials searched her unlocked smartphone, found an email to her doctor about a fentanyl overdose she survived, and asked her questions about her past drug use:
A British Columbia woman was issued a lifetime ban at the US border after officials found an email with her doctor about a fentanyl overdose she survived a year ago.
Chelsea, 28, whose last name is being withheld due to fears that it could affect future employment, answered a series of questions about drug use while attempting to cross the Washington-British Columbia border. She said her phone, which didn't have a password, was searched for about two hours. During questioning after her phone was searched, she admitted to using illegal drugs before, including cocaine.
At the US border, the searching of electronic devices, including smartphones, is allowed as part of inspection. Warrantless searches on phones are also allowed at the Canadian border—a practice defense lawyers are trying to end.
"It was super violating—I couldn't believe they went into my sent emails folder and found something from a year ago that was addressed to my doctor," Chelsea said. "It was really humiliating, and it felt terrible having to bring that up."
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security recently released a one-page security assessment of the U.S.-Canadian border that identified drug smuggling (including cocaine and fentanyl) as well as "unidentified [Canadian] homegrown violent extremists" as security challenges:
The drugs that are commonly transported into Canada from the United States are cocaine and methamphetamine. Ecstasy, fentanyl and marijuana are smuggled into the U.S. from Canada.
[...] "This report identifies several areas where we can improve border security — especially in combating drug trafficking and preventing potential acts of terrorism," Katko, R-Camillus, said. "Stopping the influx of drugs coming into our country through the northern border is of particular concern, given the heroin and opioid epidemic plaguing central New York."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by vux984 on Thursday August 17 2017, @11:36PM
You've made this point a couple times. And you are right... but also wrong. In 1850 if you crossed the border with a filing cabinet on your shoulder it was because you actively wanted those files to come across the border with you. You would not be 'incidentally lugging around a filing cabinet'. And it was reasonable to argue that if you didn't want every file in your filing cabinet searched, why were you carrying it; but that argument no longer applies.
First -- The fact that most people carry around tiny devices that are the equivalent of thousands of filing cabinets SHOULD change everything. Its reasonable to search the documents someone carried over the border in a filing cabinet. Its not reasonable if the filing cabinet is the size of a human hair and everyone carries thousands of them, without thinking about, as a matter of course. If everyone is carrying piles of personal information everywhere due to changes in technology the correct response is changes in the law, NOT for people to have to buy burner phones and do other weird data purging rituals when about to cross a border. The law should support the society we want to live in; never the other way around.
Second -- the contents of my phone are not a threat to the united states. No email crossing the border whether via the internet or carried over physically on a phone is a significant threat. So border services really have no real business looking at it. The scope of their role is securing the border, it really shouldn't go beyond that. It shouldn't be carte blanche to scrutinize every tourist, every professional, every conference goer, and every RETURNING CITIZEN beyond verifying they are who they say they are, verifying that they aren't bringing in anything dangerous / prohibited / quarantined, and verifying there is no preexisting reason to prevent them entrance (outstanding warrants, expired visa, previous convictions, terrorist watch lists... etc). THAT is their job. Their job isn't to catch previously undetected office supply pilfering by reading your email as the cross the border. If there is no pre-existing reason to stop you at the border, then the search should amount to ensuring you aren't moving contraband. That's it. And if there is a pre-existing reason to stop you at the border, but it falls short of an outstanding warrant for arrest (such as previous conviction, expired visa, whatever...) then they should simply turn you away. Citizens of course should always be allowed back in.
Finally, you wrote: "which is that if I read this story correctly, the email was physically in her "sent mail" folder stored on her phone. "
Was it though? Or was it received on the fly from the server at the request of the snooping guards? Is my sent mail from a year+ ago on my phone? Nope. In my case its just sync the last couple months months. But if I search, it'll pull matches on demand from the server. So if I'd written a note to my doctor in 2003 about drugs, and then searched for drugs in 2017, it'll still find it "on my phone". But until i searched for it, and selected the result, it wasn't on my phone. Selecting the result is what PUTS it on my phone. So now... not only everything in the filing cabinet actually carried over the border is being searched, but potentially all the filing cabinets still at the office are being searched too, thanks to this filing cabinets capability of pulling files from remote cabinets on demand.
Further