Europe is Using Smartphone Data as a Weapon to Deport Refugees

"Across the continent, migrants are being confronted by a booming mobile forensics industry that specializes in extracting a smartphone’s messages, location history, and even WhatsApp data. That information can potentially be turned against the phone owners themselves.

In 2017 both Germany and Denmark expanded laws that enabled immigration officials to extract data from asylum seekers’ phones. Similar legislation has been proposed in Belgium and Austria, while the UK and Norway have been searching asylum seekers’ devices for years.

Over the six months after Germany’s phone search law came into force, immigration officials searched 8,000 phones. If they doubted an asylum seeker’s story, they would extract their phone’s metadata – digital information that can reveal the user’s language settings and the locations where they made calls or took pictures.

To do this, German authorities are using a computer program, called Atos, that combines technology made by two mobile forensic companies – T3K and MSAB. It takes just a few minutes to download metadata.

Privacy International has investigated the UK police’s ability to search phones, indicating that immigration officials could possess similar powers. “What surprised us was the level of detail of these phone searches. Police could access information even you don’t have access to, such as deleted messages. British police are aided by Israeli mobile forensic company Cellebrite. Using their software, officials can access search history, including deleted browsing history. It can also extract WhatsApp messages from some Android phones." (Wired UK, July 2, 2018)
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What's important to note here is the amount of data that can be extracted from the average smartphone. This can include your contacts, the content of your messages, location data, photos, and through the phone's browser access to social media accounts and e-mail (do you stay logged in to your Facebook and e-mail on your phone?).