America may demand the right to peruse visitors’ mobile phones on arrival

By B.R.

THE effect that Donald Trump is having on American tourism seems clear. Data from online travel agents, which analyse customers’ searches and are thus privy to the most timely information on travel trends, are unanimous in the bleakness of their assessments. Expedia, Cheapflights and Kayak are just some of the sites reporting that interest in travelling to the United States has fallen since Mr Trump’s inauguration and his attempted travel bans and drawbridge-up rhetoric. (The strong dollar hasn't helped.) Economic forecasters are pessimistic, too. Oxford Economics, for example, reckons that as many as 6.7m fewer tourists will visit America this year; a fall of 8% compared to last year.

Those working in the American tourism industry are desperate to see the drip-drip of negative news stories come to an end. They will have been dismayed, therefore, by a Wall Street Journalarticle published on April 4th. According to the paper, the Trump administration is considering introducing even harsher security checks on foreign tourists, either when they enter the country or when they apply for a visa. The new proposals, called “extreme vetting”, include a right to access visitors’ mobile phones. A Department of Homeland Security official told the Journal that the goal is to "figure out who you are communicating with”. Contacts will come under particular scrutiny, although the implication is that other functions—photos, maybe, or messaging apps—could also be of interest.

Such a measure would be both ludicrously easy to circumvent for criminals and disproportionately stressful for the average traveller. Many of us are weirdly protective about our smartphones; we consult them so often they feel like confidantes. The idea of a stranger nosing his way around them feels like a violation. Meanwhile, the policy would have little effect on the dangerous people it is supposed to target. Ne’er-do-wells would simply stop bringing incriminating phones into the country (if, indeed, that is what they currently do). It is presumably not beyond the wit of a foreign terrorist to log onto Craigslist once he has entered the United States and pick up a cheap unlocked Samsung.

Other measures under consideration include demanding access to travellers’ financial records and social-media passwords. Unlike some of Mr Trump’s other self-inflicted travel wounds, such extreme vetting might at least be indiscriminate. According to the WSJ’s source, it will not only affect people from the Muslim countries that the president distrusts. Nationals from America’s allies such as Britain, Germany and Australia could also be subject to checks. As residents of these countries can travel to the United States without a visa, any phone-rummaging would presumably have to be done on arrival, rather than on applying for permission to travel.

Even if few travellers end up having their phones examined, such signals from the Trump administration—whether travel bans from Muslim countries, laptop restrictions on planes, overly intrusive security screening or building walls—suggest a country that would rather tourists stayed away. Even if this is not the intention, it may well end up being the result.