A U.S. appeals court has formalized what border agents have long practiced: the warrantless search of travellers' cellphones, treating these intimate digital archives as mere property subject to inspection at will. The September 2026 ruling from the Second Circuit, born from a fraud case at JFK Airport, extends legal cover to a surveillance posture that now reaches Canadian travellers crossing into the United States. In an age when a phone holds the contours of an entire life — its relationships, finances, and private thoughts — the court has drawn a line that places the border outside the ord