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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday January 06 2018, @08:17PM   Printer-friendly
from the just-say-no dept.

Encrypt and lock your electronic devices, because the border agents want to touch them:

Customs officers stationed at the American border and at airports searched an estimated 30,200 cellphones, computers and other electronic devices of people entering and leaving the United States last year — an almost 60 percent increase from 2016, according to Homeland Security Department data released on Friday.

Despite the surge, Customs and Border Protection officials said the searches affected fewer than 1 percent of the more than 300 million travelers who arrived in the United States last year.

Homeland Security officials say border searches are an important investigative tool and are used sparingly by its agents. "In this digital age, border searches of electronic devices are essential to enforcing the law at the U.S. border and to protecting the American people," said John Wagner, the deputy executive assistant commissioner at Customs and Border Protection. Mr. Wagner said the agency was committed to preserving the rights and civil liberties of travelers whose devices are searched.

Also at ABC.


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  • (Score: 2) by terrab0t on Sunday January 07 2018, @04:10AM

    by terrab0t (4674) on Sunday January 07 2018, @04:10AM (#619002)

    I don’t care what they have been officially told. When they force me to log into my device and take it down the hall to do whatever they want with it I assume they will sack all data stored on it and all data it has access to. They just won’t officially admit to it.

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