I had a friend get refused entry to Australia because they made him open his Facebook messenger, and they found out he was planning to work on a tourist visa.

They only did that though because he just finished a 3 month tourist visa, left the country for a week, and then came back with another 3 months.

Seems to me that's the digital equivalent of showing up on a tourist visa (or via the visa waiver program) with a bunch of resumes printed in your luggage.

UK citizen here. I'm not aware of any policy in the UK that forces travellers to hand over their device passwords - i.e. not in the same draconian way that's happening in the US. Border control in the UK is pretty well overstretched as it is. I don't think they've got the resources to perform this type of intrusion, even if they wanted to.

From 2013: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/10177765/Travellers-mo...

Also a case in 2016 of a UK citizen being arrested for refusing to give his password to UK border police: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/sep/25/campaign-gro...

Yeah, but I don't think it's a routine thing (I'll check with my pal who runs a borders team to be sure). I think you need to have been a specific target and person of interest for things to go that far.

That's pretty much the same "but it only happens to a small fraction of people so it's okay" deflection argument that you can say about the US policy as well, which you called "draconian".