Border Patrol Searches of Electronic Devices

AAUP National
June 13, 2017

In conjunction with the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, the AAUP is seeking information from any faculty members who have had their cell phones or other electronic devices searched by US border patrol officers at the nation's borders while travelling internationally.  The Knight First Amendment Institute is a recently created non-profit organization that works to defend an strengthen freedoms of speech and the press in the digital age through litigation, research, and education.

The AAUP is concerned with the chilling effect such searches may have on academic freedom and the invasion into the privacy of academic work.  We are looking into legal issues related to a US regulation that authorizes border patrol officers to search a traveler's cell phones and other electronic devices at the borders without any basis for suspecting that the person has done anything wrong.  The government enforces this policy against both American citizens as well as noncitizens, and there has been a sharp uptick in these types of searches over the past year.

Read the full article at the National AAUP website here.