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Schwartz and his colleagues published a white paper on border security last week, which indicates U.S. border agents can look at all cloud data in addition to what’s downloaded to a device. It also says agents have sophisticated enough forensic software that data recently deleted from devices may still be retrieved.

There are protocols around documenting searches, the retention of information and the destroying of information if it doesn’t contain any evidence.

Big loopholes exist, however, that make destruction less likely, the paper says — if there’s information related to “immigration matters” writ large, or “terrorism information,” authorities can keep and share it. People whose data is held by the U.S. government won’t be notified if their data is deleted or not, but they can try filing freedom of information requests.

From the beginning of October 2015 to the end of September 2016, five times as many electronic media searches — 23,877 — were conducted by U.S. agents than the year before, Long confirmed. That’s still a fraction of the total number of arrivals (390 million in 2016) but the number is increasing. NBC reported this week 5,000 searches were conducted in February alone.

“It does appear that in the beginning of this presidency that there has been more than a doubling in the frequency of border device searches,” Schwartz said. “We do not know whether this is a directive from the top to do more, or whether or not this is a cultural change reacting to the perception of agents about what the administration wants them to do.”

“I think the only real restraint that governments have is negative publicity when they get caught doing things to their own citizens,” said privacy lawyer Shaun Brown, at the nNovation firm in Ottawa. “But when it comes to other citizens, there’s no one really out there to lobby or create a lot of negative pressure when you’re spying on non-citizens, people from another country.”

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