Ask HN: Why does the US government search through people's phones at the border?
Seems scary, tyrannical and totalitarian to me.
Now he's your paranoid uncle who talks about how cool the nazis were and offers you guns.
In the UK our terror legislation give our border police the power to question and search you without any reason or suspicion (regardless of nationality). Furthermore, you have no right to silence during this questioning and must answer their questions truthfully. You also must give them access to your devices, and if you don't you will face criminal charges. You also are not allowed a lawyer during questioning.
I disagree with this (obviously), but I genuinely thought this was fairly standard among Western countries?
It's interesting because in the UK we have this view that the US is a backwards country in many ways, but then I see posts like this about what seems to me as a Brit to be fairly minor abuses of government power and wonder if I'm actually living in a totalitarian country without realising it?
Here in the UK we'd argue that the government needs this power to keep us safe. Some will disagree with this, but I'd argue that the people the government target at the border seem to be political dissidents and it seems that UK police are given intel by the state to question certain political activists under terror law whenever they travel back and forth from the UK.
The problem is it's hard to defend these people because they are always politically extreme and dislikable characters, but often very clearly not a terror threat.
This has become such a problem for political activists in the UK that it's become routine for them to take burner phones whenever they travel to prevent UK police attempting to search through their personal documents and conversations or charging them under terror legislation if they refuse.
More recently the UK government has shifted strategies a bit and now if you're a foreign national you're quite likely to just be refused entry. For example, we've banned people like Kanye West from entry to the UK for this political views (despite him apologising) which resulted in the music festival he was booked for being cancelled.
I know it may seem bad to people in the US, but you will get used to this. Like in the UK, US political activists will just learn how to protect themselves from these kinds of searches.
Not trying to minimise anyones worries or anything though. I hope you guys are able to push back against this creeping totalitarianism.
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An interesting video from someone who went through this, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=991kRp8KUmo
Because in the USA, border control is now ICE. They throw people in jail. They deport people. They separate families. They kill people.
Most Americans are quite opposed to those things.
We also have a constitution that includes a Bill of Rights. The rules surrounding searches of personal property were established a long time ago, and people fight to keep them.
> Is the consequence if they do not like your answers ever worse than just not letting someone in?
You can definitely be charged with terror offences, especially if you're a British national. They do this under terror law after all.
Here in the UK terrorism is defined very liberally too. For example, here's a video of UK police arresting hundreds of left-wing pensioners under terror law for simply holding signs supporting a group called "Palestine Action", https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmE05x1hnlY
UK police don't generally shoot people because in the UK it's illegal to own even defensive items like pepper-spray, so outside of extremely rare cases the police don't ever need to shoot people so are not given guns. But I believe the UK police are more heavy handed when it comes to arresting people for political speech reasons when compared to the US. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you guys seem to be able to say basically whatever you want – which is generally considered a right-wing thing here.
> They deport people. They separate families.
UK terror law probably doesn't apply in the way you might expect – e.g., stopping people coming from places like Afghanistan, etc. Here terror law is generally only applied at airports to people entering legally – and I'd argue solely as an intimidation tactic against people who might hold views the UK government doesn't like. As mad as this might sound, we generally would never stop someone coming illegally from a place like Afghanistan even if they come without any documentation.
The UK is weird in this regard. We probably have the opposite "problem" here if anything... Although, for neutrality's sake, a someone people wouldn't consider this a problem at all. All depends on your politics after all =)
But in some ways the UK has no border enforcement... If you try to enter the UK illegally by a small boat typically the coast guard will pick you up and take you to shore, then the police will escort you to a hotel where we'll fund your stay, your meals and give you some spending money too. We'll do this for a few years then allow you to stay – at which point you can apply for a free home and bring your family over. Some will be deported, but only if they're coming from Europe or somewhere fairly developed. I very very much doubt this is the same in the US?
Anyway, point is, in the UK if you're able to enter the country (either legally or illegally) you'll be very unlikely to be forcibly removed because we generally don't have the power to legally remove people, and even where we do it takes a long time and is very expensive.
To highlight the extent to which this is true, we often have cases where someone has come to the UK illegally from a far-right country like Afghanistan, then went on to rape some woman or child, then because we're not legally able to remove them we let them stay. For example, we had someone just a few weeks ago who raped 30 kids and after being locked up for 14 years he was released as we were unable to deport him despite most Brits obviously not wanting him here. Some people on the left would argue this isn't a problem and right-wing commenters and papers overly focus on select cases. Some argue the solution is to education those coming from these countries that it's not okay to rape women or children in the UK, which for better or worse is a strategy the UK government is now adopting:
- https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6a7f0a2003b4f...
- https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6a8410190ad4b...
I think border enforcement is just hard. I think if I illegally try to enter a country with my family then I'd expect the government to throw me in jail and separate me from my family in the process (this happens anyway when we arrest people in the UK, again maybe different in US). For me my concern is overwhelmingly what happens to those entering legally who simply hold political views the government doesn't like...
Within reason I'd quite like to see more border enforcement in the UK, but less when it comes to banning people from coming from places like the US simply because they hold political views the UK government doesn't like, https://www.theguardian.com/media/2026/jun/01/us-political-c...