What's interesting from a legal perspective (to me anyway) is if his call list and contacts are protected by attorney client privilege.
I think maybe the correct answer is to backup your phone in the cloud, and then factory reset it before coming back into the US.
You might also try to mail the phone back to a friend in the US with a tracking number, then you'll know if it got seized in customs, and you can fight it there. You might have to pay a tariff on it, but the tariff might be worth it to avoid trouble at the border.
> Customs and Border Protection (CBP) asserts a very different principle: that your privacy rights disappear at the border. CBP policy gives officers the right to seize and search any electronic device that passes through customs. While the agency claims that copies of any attorney-client documents will be "destroyed" after a search, it doesn't recognize limits on its ability to collect and copy those documents in the first place.
1. Any government agency can assert anything they want, until a court strikes it down.
2. CBP/ICE don't just operate at the border (which is problematic). They are an arm of the government seizing people without warrants. (Which is also problematic).
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 43.0 ms ] threadhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43647812
I’m sure that’s just routine procedure.
I think maybe the correct answer is to backup your phone in the cloud, and then factory reset it before coming back into the US.
You might also try to mail the phone back to a friend in the US with a tracking number, then you'll know if it got seized in customs, and you can fight it there. You might have to pay a tariff on it, but the tariff might be worth it to avoid trouble at the border.
> Customs and Border Protection (CBP) asserts a very different principle: that your privacy rights disappear at the border. CBP policy gives officers the right to seize and search any electronic device that passes through customs. While the agency claims that copies of any attorney-client documents will be "destroyed" after a search, it doesn't recognize limits on its ability to collect and copy those documents in the first place.
1. Any government agency can assert anything they want, until a court strikes it down.
2. CBP/ICE don't just operate at the border (which is problematic). They are an arm of the government seizing people without warrants. (Which is also problematic).
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna76186
That does not appear to be the case here.