Sure. Thank you very much.
I think a few things that underlie that assumption no longer hold when we're talking about searches of electronic devices. One is the idea that travellers have been able to control what they carry across the border with them, and therefore there may have been this assumption in previous jurisprudence and legislation and policy that travellers, fully aware of what they're bringing across the border, know that they will be searched under a customs rationale for contraband and things that cannot be carried across the border.
Those assumptions just do not hold when we're talking about electronic devices because of the wealth of information they store. There's the idea that because someone's phone is connected to the Internet and, therefore, connected to their email, their social media, all of their accounts, and their financial records, they are somehow, in a meaningful sense, transporting those records across the border in a way that opens them up to be searched. I don't think that rationale holds, and I think that's why we need to really push back against this notion of extending to electronic devices the customs rationale for searching.
I think this is particularly shown in the practice of forensic searches. As I mentioned, people can even have deleted items searched. The government can get access to those. Again, in no meaningful sense do people have control over what they are bringing across the border, so I don't think we would say that people have a diminished expectation of privacy in their entire digital lives.