Answered in above response. They took it long enough to make a copy. These were random searches. I have flown around the planet way too many times.

Complete speculation... but they're security grunts, not digital forensic experts.

At best, they probably just plug it into a black box and that box searches what it can for certain file hashes or names. Encrypted disk and it's game over.

Unless they're specifically looking for your data in particular - then all bets are off.

Not sure what they'd do with most modern laptops that have soldered drives though.

Happy to be corrected.

I believe they often ask for your passwords at the border too. I read that some borders also ask for your social media accounts, not sure if they want passwords for those too.

Would be interesting to set up a honeypot of sorts that records everything they do when they login to your device. Could even activate the camera and mic recording.

It seems unbelievable that it's accepted that they can walk away with your device and login as you and then do whatever they want.

I've seen on border patrol shows the guards going through messages on the phone looking for evidence of an intent to take paid work, etc. But it looks like a pretty surface-level manual search, at least the part they show on TV.

Surely somebody on here has had experience in this from the other side?

> What evidence

Well I am pretty sure the personnel liked GP’s laptop colour and just wanted to admire it in privacy. Or maybe lick it as well; and possibly passing around among themselves so that more could lick it.

This happened to me at airports in Israel and Germany. I am a US citizen and was not in any category of suspicion. This happens with US airport security too. I was dumb back then and did not encrypt my drive. They did ask me to boot up the laptop first probably to ensure it wasn't encrypted. If this ever happens to me again, I will refuse to decrypt the drive.