US Customs Can Save Data From Certain Searched Phones for 15 Years
A US senator is sounding the alarm(Opens in a new window) about a US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) policy that allows the agency to download and save data from some searched phones for 15 years, and make the information available to thousands of federal agents.
On Thursday, Senator Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) sent a letter(Opens in a new window) to CBP, urging it to update its data-collection policy "to focus on suspected criminals and security threats, rather than allowing indiscriminate rifling through Americans' private records without suspicion of a crime."
The data collection can occur when CBP goes beyond a basic phone search, which usually involves a border officer examining a phone by hand to view text messages and call logs. The CBP can also conduct an advanced search when agency officials have "reasonable suspicion" that the traveler is violating laws or poses a national security concern. It can then use forensic tools to download data from the phone into a central database.
According to Wyden, CBP told him during a June meeting that it saves data from “less than 10,000” phones per year, which includes archiving text messages, calls logs, contact lists and in some cases, photos and other sensitive data.
“CBP confirmed during this briefing that it stores this deeply personal data taken without a warrant signed by a judge, from Americans phones for 15 years and permits approximately 2,700 DHS personnel to search this data at any time, for any reason,” he says.
In the same briefing, CBP revealed government agents can look through archived phone data without recording the purpose for the search. The data is also saved in a growing government database, but the exact scale of how many Americans have had their data
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