The Supreme Court has been asked to take on the issue of whether the federal government may search the smartphones and laptop computers of travelers at the U.S. border without a warrant or any suspicion of wrongdoing.
The number of electronic device searches at the border rose in 2016 and grew throughout former President Donald Trump’s time in office. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers carried out upwards of 30,000 electronic device searches in fiscal 2018, over three times the number from fiscal 2015, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and the ACLU of Massachusetts, which filed a 377-page petition with the Supreme Court on April 23.
