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20250414 - 边境手机搜查：CBP的权力与数据保护策略 - What to do if border police ask to search your phone

  • 分类: Clippings
  • 创建: 2025-04-14
  • 标签: 边境搜查, 手机隐私, CBP权力, 第四修正案, 数据保护, 云存储, 电子隐私, 边境政策

What to do if border police ask to search your phone

摘要 (Summary)

本文讨论了美国海关与边境保护局（CBP）在边境对旅客手机进行搜查的权力及相关法律和政策背景。尽管普通警察需要搜查令才能检查手机，但法院承认第四修正案在边境存在例外，允许CBP进行反走私检查。目前最高法院尚未对边境手机搜查作出最终裁决，CBP主要受内部规定限制，包括基本搜索和高级搜索的条件。文章还提到电子前沿基金会（EFF）和美国公民自由联盟（ACLU）提供的边境隐私保护指南，强调了不同身份（如美国公民、签证持有者、永久居民）在边境的权利差异，并提供保护数据的实用建议，如使用云存储、备用手机及加密设备等。此外，还探讨了其他国家（如加拿大、英国、澳大利亚、新西兰）的边境隐私政策，以及政府可能无视规则的行为。

要点 (Key Facts)

  • 美国海关与边境保护局（CBP）在边境有权搜查手机，基于第四修正案的边境例外。
  • 普通警察需搜查令才能检查手机，而CBP可进行基本搜索（手动翻看）和高级搜索（需合理怀疑或国家安全关切）。
  • 最高法院尚未对边境手机搜查作出最终裁决，CBP受内部规定限制。
  • 美国公民不能被阻止回国，但可能被扣留或设备被没收；签证持有者拒绝配合可能被拒入境。
  • 数据保护建议包括使用云存储、备用手机、加密设备及安全删除数据。
  • 其他国家（如加拿大、英国、新西兰）边境政策不同，部分国家对拒绝解锁手机有罚款或法律后果。
  • 政府可能无视规则，快速行动绕过法院干预。

正文 (Content)

Border phone searches are in the news a lot lately. Last month, a French scientist was allegedly blocked from coming to a conference in Houston after U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) found statements against President Donald Trump on his phone. A few days later, Brown University doctor Rasha Alawieh was turned away at the airport after CBP allegedly found pro-Hezbollah images on her phone.
最近，边境手机搜查频繁出现在新闻中。上个月，一名法国科学家据称因美国海关与边境保护局（CBP）在其手机上发现反对唐纳德·特朗普总统的言论而被阻止参加休斯顿的一场会议。几天后，布朗大学医生拉莎·阿拉维赫在机场被拒入境，据称是因为 CBP 在其手机上发现了支持真主党的图片。

How does CBP have the power to rummage through phones so easily? After all, ordinary police can't just stop you on the street and search your phone without a warrant. But courts have recognized a border exemption to the Fourth Amendment, allowing the government to conduct routine anti-smuggling searches of travelers. Although some lower courts have weighed in on whether that exemption applies to personal electronic files, there's no definitive ruling yet on phone searches at the border.
CBP 是如何如此轻易地拥有翻查手机的权力的？毕竟，普通警察不能在街头随意拦住你并在没有搜查令的情况下搜查你的手机。但法院承认第四修正案在边境有例外，允许政府对旅客进行常规的反走私搜查。尽管一些下级法院已就该例外是否适用于个人电子文件发表意见，但目前尚未有关于边境手机搜查的最终裁决。

Until the Supreme Court rules on the issue, CBP officers are mostly limited by the agency's own internal regulations. The regulations allow officers to conduct a "basic search" (flipping through the phone by hand) at their discretion, and require "reasonable suspicion" or a "national security concern" to conduct an "advanced search" with forensic phone hacking software such as Cellebrite. The regulations also restrict officers to searching what's already on the phone, not downloading new data, so phone searches should be conducted in airplane mode or otherwise disconnected from the internet.
在最高法院就此问题作出裁决之前，美国海关与边境保护局（CBP）的官员主要受限于该机构自身的内部规定。这些规定允许官员自行决定进行“基本搜索”（手动翻看手机），并要求有“合理怀疑”或“国家安全关切”才能使用诸如 Cellebrite 之类的取证手机破解软件进行“高级搜索”。规定还限制官员只能搜索手机上已有的内容，不得下载新数据，因此手机搜索应在飞行模式下或以其他方式断开互联网连接进行。

Of course, an agency pinky-swearing not to violate your rights is not worth much in the way of practical protection. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) have both put out guides for protecting electronic privacy at the border. Reason spoke to Sophia Cope, senior staff attorney at the EFF, and Nathan Wessler, deputy director of the ACLU's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, about the nitty gritty of defending your data.
当然，一个机构仅仅口头承诺不侵犯你的权利在实际保护方面价值不大。电子前沿基金会（EFF）和美国公民自由联盟（ACLU）都发布了在边境保护电子隐私的指南。《理性》杂志与 EFF 的高级职员律师索菲娅·科普（Sophia Cope）以及 ACLU 的言论、隐私和技术项目副主任内森·韦斯勒（Nathan Wessler）就保护数据的具体细节进行了交谈。

There are a few basic tips that people should know but often don't. The U.S. government cannot prevent Americans from reentering the country no matter what. Nor can it compel anyone to give up their passwords. (The cops can force you to open a Face ID or fingerprint lock, though.) And shutting down an iPhone makes it much harder to break into. Other aspects of border privacy require more careful consideration.
有一些基本的提示人们应该知道，但往往不知道。美国政府无论如何都不能阻止美国人重新进入国家。它也不能强迫任何人交出他们的密码。（不过，警察可以强迫你打开面部识别或指纹锁。）关闭 iPhone 会让破解变得更加困难。边境隐私的其他方面需要更仔细的考虑。

The bottom line? Prospective travelers "need to have a plan about how to protect their data, and what they are going to do if they're pulled into secondary inspection and asked to unlock their device," Cope says. "You cannot be in secondary inspection like, oh crap, what am I supposed to be doing? That's the most important thing. The second most important point is that one size doesn't fit all."
底线是什么？未来的旅行者“需要有一个保护数据的计划，以及如果他们被带到二次检查并被要求解锁设备时该怎么办，”Cope 说。“你不能在二次检查时想着，哦天哪，我该怎么办？这是最重要的事情。第二重要的一点是，一刀切的方法并不适合所有人。”

Know Your Risk Factors 了解您的风险因素

U.S. citizens have the most power to refuse the government's demands for information. CBP can't stop Americans from coming back to their own country, but it can slow them down and physically separate them from their belongings. If you're an American citizen and you refuse to unlock your phone, CBP may hold you for longer—typically no more than a few hours —and seize your phone for a forensic scan.
美国公民有最大的权力拒绝政府的信息要求。海关与边境保护局（CBP）无法阻止美国人返回自己的国家，但可以拖延他们的时间并将他们与行李分开。如果你是美国公民并拒绝解锁手机，CBP 可能会将你扣留更长时间——通常不超过几个小时——并没收你的手机进行取证扫描。

"The government cannot compel you to provide or enter the password, but what they will do is say, if you don't give us the password, we're going to hold your phone until we can get into it ourselves," Wessler says.
“政府不能强迫你提供或输入密码，但他们会说，如果你不给我们密码，我们会扣留你的手机，直到我们自己能进入为止，”韦斯勒说。

Visa holders (and travelers from visa-free nationalities ) are in a very different boat. CBP agents can decide on the spot whether or not a visitor is really "eligible" to enter the United States, and the agency claims that phone searches are a routine part of that process. The principle of "innocent until proven guilty" is flipped on its head for visitors; refusing to provide information can itself become a reason to deny you entry.
签证持有者（以及来自免签国家的旅客）的情况则完全不同。CBP 探员可以当场决定一名访客是否真正“有资格”进入美国，该机构声称手机搜索是这一过程的常规部分。对于访客来说，“无罪推定”的原则被颠倒了；拒绝提供信息本身就可能成为拒绝你入境的理由。

Legal permanent residents are in a gray area. In theory, a valid green card should give you the right to re-enter the country unless an immigration judge takes it away. "Prior to this version of the Trump administration, we would say that generally speaking, green card holders have the same rights as citizens to come back into the country," Cope says, but the Trump administration is now trying to flex its power to revoke green cards for "national security," as in the cases of Mahmoud Khalil and Yunseo Chung.
合法永久居民处于一个灰色地带。理论上，有效的绿卡应该赋予你重新进入美国的权利，除非移民法官将其撤销。Cope 说：“在特朗普政府这一版本之前，我们通常会说，绿卡持有者一般拥有与公民相同的回国权利。”但特朗普政府现在正试图行使其权力，以“国家安全”为由撤销绿卡，例如 Mahmoud Khalil 和 Yunseo Chung 的案例。

Beyond immigration status, certain people might attract more government attention. CBP has used the border search exception to help domestic authorities (including even the Food and Drug Administration ) look into people they were already investigating. Travel history in certain countries, especially more frequent or longer trips, may also raise red flags.
除了移民身份外，某些人可能会引起政府更多的关注。海关与边境保护局（CBP）利用边境搜查例外条款帮助国内当局（甚至包括食品药品监督管理局）调查他们已经在调查的人。在某些国家的旅行历史，特别是更频繁或更长时间的旅行，也可能引发警示。

Professionals who deal with confidential information—such as lawyers, businesspeople, doctors, and journalists—have to consider the security of their work product. The CBP regulations around medical and journalistic data are vague, stating only that they "shall be handled in accordance with any applicable federal law and CBP policy." The regulations similarly state that CBP will treat commercial data "as business confidential information and shall protect that information from unauthorized disclosure."
处理机密信息的专业人士——如律师、商人、医生和记者——必须考虑他们工作成果的安全性。关于医疗和新闻数据的海关与边境保护局（CBP）规定较为模糊，仅表示“应根据任何适用的联邦法律和 CBP 政策进行处理”。规定同样指出，CBP 将把商业数据视为“商业机密信息，并保护该信息免遭未经授权的披露”。

The protections for attorney-client privilege are a little stronger; CBP officers are required to bring in the agency's lawyers before searching potentially privileged data. However, the regulations also call for pretty intense questioning in the process: "The Officer shall seek clarification, if practicable in writing, from the individual asserting this privilege as to specific files, file types, folders, categories of files, attorney or client names, email addresses, phone numbers, or other particulars that may assist CBP in identifying privileged information."
律师-客户特权的保护稍微强一些；海关与边境保护局（CBP）官员在搜索可能涉及特权数据之前，必须请来该机构的律师。然而，相关规定也要求在过程中进行相当深入的询问：“官员应寻求澄清，如果可行的话，以书面形式，从主张此特权的个人处了解具体文件、文件类型、文件夹、文件类别、律师或客户姓名、电子邮件地址、电话号码或其他可能帮助 CBP 识别特权信息的细节。”

Protect Your Data 保护您的数据

If CBP escalates by seizing a device, then the data they can access is a matter of technical security measures. Users can increase the security of their devices by encrypting their hard drives, for example. (The latest version of the iPhone automatically encrypts its hard drive if idled.) Simply shutting down a device may make it harder to break encryption. Unfortunately, the government's abilities are somewhat unclear.
如果美国海关与边境保护局（CBP）升级行动，扣押设备，那么他们能访问的数据就取决于技术安全措施。用户可以通过加密硬盘来提高设备的安全性，例如。（最新版本的 iPhone 在闲置时会自动加密硬盘。）简单地关闭设备可能会使破解加密变得更困难。不幸的是，政府的具体能力有些不明朗。

"The question that is impossible to answer from the outside," Wessler says, "is at any given moment, where are we in the cat-and-mouse game between Cellebrite and similar companies and Google and Apple and their operating systems?"
“从外部无法回答的问题是，”韦斯勒说，“在任何特定时刻，我们在 Cellebrite 及类似公司与谷歌和苹果及其操作系统之间的猫捉老鼠游戏中处于什么位置？”

The best way to protect data is not to have it lying around. After all, "border authorities can only search things that you have on your devices at the border," Wessler adds. The trick is knowing how to make sure that data is actually inaccessible when you're crossing the border, and how to make sure you can get it back once you're done with your journey.
保护数据的最佳方式是不要让它随处可见。毕竟，“边境当局只能搜查你在边境时设备上携带的东西，”韦斯勒补充道。关键在于知道如何确保在你过境时数据确实无法被访问，以及如何确保在旅程结束后能够重新获取这些数据。

A simple solution is the good old burner phone. It might make sense to keep separate travel and home devices, and it's often possible to switch SIM cards between phones, so that both devices can be reached at the same phone number. The EFF guide for border privacy recommends the Google Chromebook as a good travel device, because the laptop is both cheap and designed to store most data on the cloud rather than locally.
一个简单的解决方法是使用老式的备用手机。分开旅行和家用设备可能是有意义的，而且通常可以在手机之间切换 SIM 卡，这样两个设备都可以通过同一个电话号码联系上。边境隐私的 EFF 指南推荐谷歌 Chromebook 作为一种不错的旅行设备，因为这款笔记本电脑价格便宜，而且设计上大部分数据存储在云端而非本地。

In general, cloud storage is your friend. Services such as Google Drive and iCloud allow users to easily access their data via the internet without storing that data on the physical device itself. Again, CBP only searches devices that have been disconnected from the internet. It's possible to disconnect from cloud storage and delete local copies of the data before a journey, and then connect to cloud storage and download the data again afterwards.
一般来说，云存储是你的朋友。像 Google Drive 和 iCloud 这样的服务允许用户通过互联网轻松访问他们的数据，而无需将数据存储在物理设备本身上。再次强调，CBP 只搜索已断开互联网连接的设备。可以在旅行前断开云存储连接并删除本地数据副本，然后在旅行后再连接到云存储并重新下载数据。

However, there are a few important considerations. Data that is "deleted" from a device may still be there. Alawieh's allegedly incriminating photos, for example, were found in the "Recently Deleted" folder of her phone. (The iPhone keeps deleted photos in the bin for 30 days unless the user manually removes them.) Even clearing out the virtual trash bin "is not a guarantee at all that it will be safe from search, because deleting often means it just goes into unallocated space on the phone," Wessler warns.
然而，有几个重要的考虑因素。从设备上“删除”的数据可能仍然存在。例如，Alawieh 据称有罪的照片是在她手机的“最近删除”文件夹中找到的。（iPhone 会将删除的照片保存在回收站中 30 天，除非用户手动删除。）即使清空虚拟垃圾桶“也完全不能保证它不会被搜索到，因为删除通常意味着它只是进入了手机上的未分配空间，”Wessler 警告说。

The EFF guide includes a technical overview of how to securely delete data. The most dramatic measure is to perform a "factory reset" of your phone before crossing the border. However, crossing the border with an empty device can cause CBP agents to think you are hiding something. If you're a citizen, that suspicion may lead to more of a headache. If you're a visitor, CBP may decide to turn you away.
EFF 指南包括如何安全删除数据的技术概述。最极端的措施是在过境前对手机进行“恢复出厂设置”。然而，带着一个空设备过境可能会让 CBP 官员认为你在隐藏什么。如果你是公民，这种怀疑可能会带来更多麻烦。如果你是访客，CBP 可能会决定拒绝你入境。

Be Practical 务实

S ome data may have to cross the border with you. "Maybe you won't have internet access, because you're going to be out on an expedition somewhere, and you really need data on your phone," Cope says. "It's not really reasonable for you to put a bunch of data on the cloud and wait there for two hours for it to download. There's lots of different factors that would implicate how people would decide."
有些数据可能必须随你一起过境。Cope 说：“也许你无法访问互联网，因为你要去某个地方探险，而你真的需要在手机上存储数据。把大量数据放在云端，然后在那儿等两个小时下载，这并不合理。有很多不同的因素会影响人们的决定。”

On the other hand, making some information available could help to avoid more aggressive scrutiny. For example, journalists might want to delete their conversations with sources while keeping benign family group chats. "As a privacy advocate, I don't like that advice. In an ideal situation, you don't want the government to have access to anything, because even looking at text messages with your mom is a privacy invasion," Cope says. "But it is about a practical decision."
另一方面，提供一些信息可能有助于避免更激进的审查。例如，记者可能希望删除与消息来源的对话，同时保留无害的家庭群聊。“作为一个隐私倡导者，我不喜欢这个建议。在理想情况下，你不希望政府能访问任何东西，因为即使是查看你和你妈妈的短信也是一种隐私侵犯，”Cope 说。“但这是一个实际的决定。”

Another consideration is what happens on the other side of the journey. Canada, Britain, Australia, and New Zealand, which all share intelligence with the U.S. government under the Five Eyes program, have different border privacy policies. Under Australian law, travelers do not have to unlock their phones. Canadian authorities, like U.S. authorities, say they will seize a phone if a traveler refuses to unlock it. New Zealand imposes a $5,000 fine for failing to unlock a phone, and Britain considers refusing to unlock a phone for police to be a counterterrorism offense.
另一个需要考虑的问题是旅程另一端的情况。加拿大、英国、澳大利亚和新西兰，这些国家都通过“五眼联盟”计划与美国政府共享情报，它们的边境隐私政策各不相同。根据澳大利亚法律，旅客无需解锁手机。加拿大当局与美国当局一样，表示如果旅客拒绝解锁手机，他们将没收手机。新西兰对拒绝解锁手机的旅客处以 5000 美元的罚款，而英国则认为拒绝为警方解锁手机属于反恐犯罪。

American citizens who have done nothing wrong might still hesitate to exercise their rights at the border, simply because of the obstacles that CBP can impose. Sitting in secondary inspection for two hours could cause a traveler to miss a connecting flight, and CBP seizing electronics can impose a major financial burden. Although CBP regulations state that electronics should only be held for five days, the agency has held on to phones for months, according to the ACLU guide.
美国公民即使没有做错任何事，在边境行使自己的权利时仍可能犹豫不决，仅仅是因为美国海关与边境保护局（CBP）可能设置的障碍。在二次检查中等待两小时可能会导致旅客错过转机航班，而 CBP 扣押电子设备可能会带来巨大的经济负担。尽管 CBP 的规定指出电子设备只能被扣留五天，但根据美国公民自由联盟（ACLU）的指南，该机构曾将手机扣留数月之久。

Electronic search and seizure is especially stressful when the device belongs to someone else. Employers should have a plan for dealing with government searches of company data at the border, and "ideally back up their employees…to give people the right to say, this is my work laptop and I am not authorized to give you access because of the proprietary and confidential information on there," Cope says.
电子搜索和扣押在设备属于他人时尤其令人压力重重。雇主应制定计划应对边境政府对公司数据的搜索，并且“理想情况下支持他们的员工……给予人们权利说，这是我的工作笔记本电脑，我无权给你访问权限，因为里面有专有和机密信息，”Cope 说。

Finally, the government can simply disobey its own rules. In Alawieh's case, and the case of Venezuelans deported under the Alien Enemies Act, the Trump administration got around court orders by moving too fast for the courts to intervene. "We can say what's legal and what's not, but that doesn't seem to be stopping the current government from trying a lot of outrageous things," Wessler says.
最后，政府可以完全无视自己的规则。在 Alawieh 的案件以及根据《外国人敌人法》被驱逐的委内瑞拉人案件中，特朗普政府通过行动过快使得法院无法干预，从而绕过了法院的命令。Wessler 说：“我们可以说什么是合法的，什么是不合法的，但这似乎并不能阻止现任政府尝试许多令人震惊的事情。”