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Comment on Ask HN: Why does the US government search through people's phones at the border?

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Even before 9/11, border controls at airports were sometimes very rigorous, at least compared to Germany, where I'm from, or the EU in general. Since then, they have become increasingly strict. I'm not sure, however, that excessively strict controls are necessarily that effective. In the end, what matters is the quality of the checks. In 2013, I flew from Chicago to Frankfurt and realized afterwards that I had a small pocket knife in my jacket. It was completely unintentional, of course, and I was pretty shocked. At security, they had searched all kinds of things, from my shoes to my luggage. But when you have to check so many things, it's easy to become careless.

How is that possible, don’t you have to go through a metal detector? Also if you took off your jacket and put it in the scanner it would have been flagged

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