Border Force asks to search your phone arriving in Australia – what can you do?
abc.net.au
abc.net.au
What you should have done is prepare in advance by using encrypted online storage for any sort of "sensitive" data.
Delete any access app from your phone before arriving at the border. Re-connect once you're back inside the country.
For the super paranoid, don't take your phone with you. Buy a burner phone in the new country and use it to access data online. Wipe it clean and leave it behind when you exit.
Border policies like these are easily circumvented and effectively useless in the open internet age. Unless you're visiting an internet lockdown country like China, these policies only serve to entrap the most naive and disengaged.
That's why a burner phone is probably your best bet. Especially if you have, you know, anything to "hide".
And the observation that, across the board - a lot of people these days seem to not understand the concept that someone would willfully choose not to carry a smartphone. Ergo, if you say you don't have one, you must be lying.
> What agencies can access that stored data? Mr Hannay said any Commonwealth agency had the power to access that data, and they had the power to provide it to a state agency.
"But China is worse". But you are not in China.
Some years ago US did the same thing.
When people realise that all their rights are gone it will be too late.