The controversial Police, Crime, Sentencing & Courts Bill (‘Policing Bill’) includes provisions for ‘extraction of information from electronic devices’ by immigration officers. The provisions to seize and extract rely solely on ‘voluntary provision’ of devices and ‘agreement’ to extract data.
We are concerned immigration officers not only lack requisite skills, the power imbalance between state and migrant calls into question whether provision of a device can ever be truly voluntary.
This proposal comes at a time when there is a total lack of transparency around Home Office use of mobile phone extraction.
