Yes — in Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom, border officers can look through your phone, including your photos, without a warrant. Here's what the law actually says, what refusing costs you, and the one thing that genuinely helps.
At an international border you have fewer privacy rights than almost anywhere else. In all three countries, officers can ask to examine your phone as they would any other item you're carrying, and they can look at what's on it — photos included. In none of the three can they compel you to hand over a passcode on the spot without further legal authority. But in all three, refusing has consequences: your device can be seized and held, your trip delayed for hours, and — if you're not a citizen — your entry questioned.
The practical reality: assume that anything on your phone can be seen by a stranger at the border, and prepare accordingly.
Under the Customs Act 1901 (sections 186 and 203B), Australian Border Force officers can examine any goods entering or leaving the country — and the courts and the ABF treat the contents of a phone as goods. Officers don't need to suspect you of anything specific; they can say they want to inspect the device for "suspicious content" without saying what that is.
You are not legally required to hand over your passcode. But if you decline, the ABF can seize the device as a possible risk to the border and hold it for examination — its stated policy is up to 14 days, though it can be longer if something is found. The agency has commercial tools that can extract data from many phones without the passcode, and you don't have to be present while it's examined. Between 2017 and 2021, ABF searched more than 41,000 travellers' devices at Australian airports.
If the Australian Federal Police become involved and obtain a warrant, they can compel you to unlock the device, and refusing that is an offence.
US Customs and Border Protection operates under the "border search exception" to the Fourth Amendment: routine searches at the border need no warrant and no suspicion. A CBP directive updated in January 2026 sets out two kinds: a basic search, where an officer manually scrolls through your phone — photos, messages, documents — which requires no suspicion at all; and an advanced search, where equipment is connected to copy or analyse the device, which requires reasonable suspicion and supervisory approval.
Officers "may not compel" you to unlock the device or provide a passcode. But refusing can mean seizure of the device and extended inspection, and — for non-citizens — questions about admissibility. US citizens keep one firm right: you cannot be denied re-entry for refusing to unlock. In the 2025 financial year, CBP searched over 55,000 devices, more than 13,000 of them belonging to US citizens — up sharply from a few years earlier. A federal appeals court confirmed in July 2026 that a suspicion-free manual search of a traveller's photos, including hidden folders, was lawful.
One genuine protection in the 2026 directive: officers may not deliberately access data that lives only in the cloud, and may ask you to disable Wi-Fi and mobile data before a search so they don't. What's stored on the phone itself is a different matter — and photos are stored on the phone.
Under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act 2000, officers at UK ports and airports can stop, question and search travellers — and examine electronic devices — without needing any suspicion, to determine whether someone is involved in terrorism. Unlike ordinary police powers, refusing to cooperate with a Schedule 7 examination is itself a criminal offence, and that has been held to include refusing to provide a passcode. Devices can be retained for up to seven days.
Schedule 7 is used far less than the routine customs powers in Australia and the US, but its scope is broad and its penalties for refusal are unusually sharp.
What this means for your camera roll. None of this is a reason for panic — the overwhelming majority of travellers are never searched. But it's a reason for honesty about what a phone search is: a stranger, with legal authority, scrolling through your photos. If there's a picture of your passport, your driving licence, a payment card, or a screenshot of a password in there from years ago, that's what they see — and copies can be retained and shared with other agencies.
The good news is that this is a fully solvable problem, because you know when you're about to cross a border. The unread passport photo from 2019 doesn't need to be there.
You'll read that border officers "read all your data" or "download your whole phone." Basic searches are manual — an officer scrolling. Full forensic extraction is real but requires more authority in all three countries and is used in a small fraction of cases. And no border agency is scanning your phone remotely before you land; the search happens with the device in someone's hand. That's exactly why what's on the device is what matters.
See also: Who can see my photos when I hand over my phone? · What's in my camera roll that I've forgotten? · Is public phone charging safe?
Where RollGuard fits. RollGuard scans your camera roll — entirely on your phone, nothing uploaded — for the photos this guide is about: identity documents, payment cards, screenshots of passwords, and sensitive images. It shows you what it finds and lets you keep, hide, or delete each one. Run it before you travel, and the forgotten passport photo isn't a question a border officer gets to ask.
Last updated 18 August 2026. This guide describes the law and agency practice as publicly reported at that date; it isn't legal advice, and border powers change — check current guidance before you travel if it matters to you.