Australian customs searched more than 40k devices in 5 years

This isn't unique to Australia, most countries have this kind of authority to regulate their border and most never explicitly tell you the rights. Because if they phrase a question like a command most people assume they are exercising legitimate power.

The real thing is, why would keep anything on your phone that would incriminate you? There's just way too n many places to securely stash data online to be retrieved later that keeping stuff like that on your phone or laptop isn't worth it.

I don't want anyone to search my phone, but if they do force a search I pitty the person looking at the naked fat guy selfie pics.

So apparently travelers have no legal obligation to provide their passcodes to the officers. Yet,

"If a traveller exercises their right to refuse to provide a passcode, their device can be taken from the border and given to the ABF's digital forensic team for examination."

So the alternative is not having access to your phone for at least 14 days. Losing access to your phone today is huge.. no 2FA codes means you're probably locked out of many services even on a PC. Not to mention this forensics team has access to software that can break smartphone security.

So there is effectively 0 choice. If they want to search your phone, they WILL search it.

I guess the only safe way to store private info is online, encrypted and ideally on your own servers.

> why would keep anything on your phone that would incriminate you?

Plenty of things which aren't incriminating nor illegal, most people wouldn't want in the hands of others to peruse at leisure.

And the reason you would keep it on your phone is simple: Properly deleting data, encrypting then exporting it to a cloud storage provider, then reinstalling it on your phone is a massive pain in the ass to everytime you catch a flight.

Not to mention logging out and logging back in of all your services.

Like all things regarding security it comes down to hassle vs reward.

The commercial computer forensics software that Australian Border Force uses to image and scan your devices with retrieves deleted content by default, it searches for logins by default, it alerts them to your social media and does a bunch of stuff that is highly intrusive for the average person suspected of no crime but simply caught up in officers meeting their monthly targets.

Of course, intrusive security checks are common when entering prison colonies.

We (Australia) have finally voted out the conservative government that eroded our rights in the name of security. Hoping to see the new government redress these issues.