"Border device searches in Australia: what Border Force can and can't do to your phone"
Border device searches in Australia: what Border Force can and can't do to your phone
Landing in Sydney or Melbourne, you present your passport — and occasionally, an Australian Border Force (ABF) officer will ask for your phone, laptop, and sometimes the passcode to it. It happens thousands of times a year, it's lawful up to a point, and the line between "can" and "must" is the part most travellers get wrong. Here's what the law actually says.
The legal basis
The Customs Act 1901 is the main instrument. Section 186 allows customs officers to examine goods carried by passengers without a warrant, and s 186(3)(e) extends that to documents read directly or with the aid of a device — which is the hook used to open a phone or laptop and read its files. Section 186A goes further, permitting officers to make electronic copies of documents found in the course of such an examination where relevant to prohibited goods, suspected offences, or matters of interest to intelligence agencies. Non-citizens can face additional searching under s 252 of the Migration Act 1958 before clearance, and maritime officers have parallel powers under s 61 of the Maritime Powers Act 2013. (NSW Courts legal analysis, Stacks Law Firm explainer, Senate estimates answer on ABF device powers)
The scale, and the passcode question
FOI data reported by Guardian Australia shows 41,410 warrantless device examinations at airports between January 2017 and December 2021, and roughly 10,000 travellers in the two years to March 2024 after borders reopened — 2,087 in 2021-22, 5,065 in 2022-23, 4,422 in nine months of 2023-24. In about 94 per cent of cases people voluntarily handed over their passcode. Around a quarter of those stopped had data copied from their devices. (Guardian Australia, 2024, Guardian Australia, 2022)
Here's the critical legal detail: ABF officers have no statutory power to compel your passcode. Guardian Australia's reporting, backed by the Department's own FOI disclosures, quotes the ABF confirming that "travellers have no legal obligation to provide a password/passcode or provide assistance to access" a device. Officers routinely ask; most people comply; some are told (wrongly) their device will be held indefinitely if they don't. Refusing to unlock can lead officers to hold the device for further technical examination or seizure as evidence — that's their lawful fallback — but the passcode itself cannot be demanded as a legal obligation. (Guardian Australia, April 2022, Home Affairs FOI release on device examination)
Internally, the practice is standardised: a Home Affairs FOI release from December 2025 shows the ABF's Digital Device Examination procedures covering how documents may be copied, transferred and stored after an examination. (FOI FA-251200189)
Are there judicial limits?
Not yet in Australia, and honesty requires saying so plainly. No Australian court has struck down or meaningfully curtailed the border examination powers as applied to electronic devices — the comparable American litigation over border phone searches (for example, the US Fourth Circuit's 2026 ruling that no-suspicion manual phone searches at the border are permitted) has no direct Australian equivalent, because our border powers rest on a different statutory footing and there's no constitutional analogue to the Fourth Amendment. The limits that exist today are legislative, procedural and practical, not judicial. (EFF on the Fourth Circuit decision)
What matters most at the Australian border is what's on the device: importing certain material (for example, child-abuse material) is a serious offence, and a border examination is a common way such matters are detected. That's the lawful-use boundary this post operates within — this article is about protecting your privacy, never about concealing offending.
Practical, lawful guidance for travellers
- Carry less. The simplest privacy protection is a travel device or a clean profile containing nothing sensitive. Everything you bring is examinable.
- Know the passcode rule. You are not legally required to hand over your passcode; you are required to present your device for examination if directed. Decide your position before you fly, and answer questions honestly.
- Log out, don't just close apps. Cloud content synced live into an open app is visible during an examination; content not on the device isn't.
- Encrypt by default. Modern phones encrypt at rest; without the passcode, a powered-off device is a much harder examination target. Keep devices powered off in flight where practical.
- Don't lie. Misleading an officer is its own problem. "I'd prefer not to unlock this" is lawful; a false statement is not.
- Ask for details. You can ask the officer's name, the legal basis for the examination, and whether your device will be retained, and you can request a receipt.
This article is general information, not legal advice.
Related reading: what your telco retains about you and how to pick privacy hardware for your threat model.