Customs officials have copied Americans' phone data at massive scaleContacts, call logs, messages and photos from up to 10,000 travelers' phones are saved to a government database every year
Feds have run facial recognition searches on millions of Americans' driver's license photos. They have tapped private databases of people's financial and utility records to learn where they live. And they have gleaned location data from license-plate reader databases that can be used to track where people drive. CBP's inspection of people's phones, laptops, tablets and other electronic devices as they enter the country has long been a controversial practice that the agency has defended as a low-impact way to pursue possible security threats and determine an individual's "intentions upon entry" into the U.S. But the revelation that thousands of agents have access to a searchable database without public oversight is a new development in what privacy advocates and some lawmakers warn could be an infringement of Americans' Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures.
The database, known as the Automated Targeting System, is used "to further review, analyze, and assess information CBP obtained from electronic devices associated with individuals who are of a significant law enforcement, counterterrorism" or national security concern, he said.
CBP officials declined, however, to answer questions about how many Americans' phone records are in the database, how many searches have been run or how long the practice has gone on, saying it has made no additional statistics available "due to law enforcement sensitivities and national security implications."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/09/15/government-surveillance-database-dhs/