U.S. customs searched a record number of electronic devices last year— Recently revised directive adds flash drives, smart watches to searchable devices
United States customs officers conducted a record number of searches of electronic devices last year of people travelling to the U.S., and a recent update to its directives adds new devices such as smart watches, SIM cards and flash drives to the list of things subject to search.
Officers searched 55,318 computers, cellphones and other devices in 2025, up 17.6 per cent from the 47,047 devices searched in 2024 and up 32.4 per cent from the 41,767 devices searched in 2023, according to statistics from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).
13 replies
My German company has a travel directive to use clean-slate Laptops and virgin burner phones when going to the US for some time now already.
There are reasons for that...
Completely understandable, Americans are definitely using these searches for industrial espionage.
Would be even better if your company had a travel directive not to travel to the US.
Would be kinda hard for an international company that has several work locations in the US... ;-)
EFF has an article on this, too. They have links on how to limit ad tracking on iphone and android.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/03/targeted-advertising-gives-your-location-government-just-ask-cbp
USB killer would be a fun thing to bring to the US and have it searched despite your claims that it is not a flash drive
I wonder how that would go if you explicitly tell them what it is and they did it anyway. Hiding its purpose might cause issues, but telling them and being ignored must be different?
I doubt the fun would last long for you...
Time to take a flash drive, load it up with viruses and start traveling in and out of the United States.
Just make a zip bomb and brick their PCs. nakedhumans42.zip will need to be inspected.
Have it take over the computers camera, take a picture of them, use AI to remove their clothes, do a Nelson HaHa pointing at the camera pic, then brick the computer.
This shit has been in place and in use since the Patriot Act.
It's also been an open secret that they do it for industrial espionage purposes so never bring company devices or devices configured to access the company network over.
Part of the reason I've avoided the US for vacations or even just changing flights since the early 00s - I'll just go to Canada instead.
Btw, are they protected against BadUSB?