The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - A Wednesday End Bits Special - How to Deal With Border Phone Searches

Episode Date: January 7, 2026

The latest episode starts with how to prepare yourself if US Customs searches your phone records. You like end bits and we enjoy giving you some every once in a while. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Wednesday, and it's an N-Bit special this week. Coming right up. And hello there. Welcome to Wednesday. Welcome to this Wednesday's N-Bit special. As you know, not all Wednesdays are a new episode.

We basically have Wednesdays for Encore editions. But some of you have said you really like these NBid specials, and they're easy to do. It's basically me just reading, and my good friend Mark Bulgutch doing the research, he finds all this stuff. He's an amazing guy. Mark, as you know, has co-authored number of books with me.

He does all the heavy lifting on these things, let me tell you. We have a new one coming out later this year. I can't tell you anything about it yet. But I can tell from the letters that I received from many of you, that many of you are really going to enjoy this book. I think everyone will enjoy it. I think it's an important part of our,

it's an important part of our lives, the focus on this book. So without saying any more, it'll come out this fall of 2026 and I guess it'll be a couple of months from now we'll be able to tell you a little more about it the major writing is done we're just in editing now

and we have a title we have ideas on a book cover we've got a number of things going but we're looking forward to working with Simon and Schuster once again is our publisher, and we'll be seeing that. In the meantime, Mark loves to shovel stuff to me on a weekly basis as potential end bits for a Wednesday program.

That's when he's not, you know, writing books or writing his column. I don't know how many of you have seen it before. Those in Southern Ontario probably have, but everybody can access it. He has a Saturday column. in the Toronto Star. And it's always good. It could be about anything. So Saturdays are a big day for us.

I have my newsletter, the buzz, comes out Saturday mornings. And Saturday mornings is when Mark's column appears in the Toronto Star as well. So, okay, there's the plug for Mark. In terms of N-Bits today, here's how we're going to start. I don't know how many times you

crossed the border if at all into the United States last year but if you did you've probably heard about and we're concerned about the issue about your phone and whether or not it was going to be searched I think the assumption most of us take and when I think about it I think I only crossed the border

once last year which is really odd for me. I usually half a dozen times at least a year. But last year I turned down a number of invites to the States. And I think I only cross once. And when I did cross, I was particularly concerned about this phone issue and about, you know, American border officials searching the phone. And what I mean?

I mean searching, I mean searching, going through everything on your phone. now I'm not sure you want people doing that and especially so if you've ever said anything in even a joking fashion about the current U.S. President because that may cause you all kinds of problems

at the border so the New York Times wrote a piece about what your rights are with your phone and it was mainly for Americans but not just Americans in terms of phone searches for when they were coming into the country and being checked by U.S. customs. So the same goes for us when we're going into the country. There are a few differences.

They have certain rights, obviously, as American citizens that we don't have as Canadian citizens, unless they're a dual citizens, or unless you're a Canadian who has a green card allowing you to work in the U.S. So given all those, qualifiers. Let me get some highlights from the New York Times piece. And as always with the N-bit specials, I tend to read some of the story. This one was written by Gabe Castro Root

in the New York Times just a couple of days ago. So I'm not going to read it all, but I'll read parts of it. When U.S. border agents turned away a French scientist in March after searching his phone, the French authorities cried foul, blaming messages commenting on President Trump's policies for the decision. U.S. officials denied that politics had played a role, but the incident left some travelers with an urgent question. Are such searches even legal? The short answer is yes. The U.S. customs and border protection agents have broad authority to look through travelers' phones, laptops, and other electronic devices, under an exception to the Fourth Amendment's protection against warrantless searches. Customs of Border Patrol in the U.S.

conducted 55,318 searches of electronic devices at ports of entry in fiscal 2025, according to the agency. Now, that sounds like a lot of searches, more than 55,000. and it's up from the previous two years. Though keep this in mind, the number represents only about 0.01% of the nearly 420 million travelers who entered or exited the country by air, land, and sea in fiscal year 2025.

Now, that would suggest the odds are very, very slim. You're going to be searched. But I tell you, when I went in, I was freaked by the possibility. I took a burner phone. In other words, I left my major phone at home, and I just had another one that had nothing on it and used it. Now, the customs people say the searches are conducted to detect digital contraband.

terrorism-related content, and information relevant to visitor admissibility, all of which play a critical role in national security. That may be true, but an increasing number of travelers report being questioned about legally protected online speech when crossing the border. So here are a number of questions you've got to keep in mind.

Do I have to unlock my device? say your device is locked. You go through customs and they say unlock it. Well, agents can demand access to any travelers' electronics at a port of entry for any reason. Now, remember, if you're a U.S. citizen, different things apply to you. Then if you're a Canadian citizen or somebody other than an American, you've pretty much got to do what they ask you to do there or you can refuse to unlock

and they can refuse to let you into the country. It's a personal choice that may depend on what information you're carrying, said one of the officials for speech, privacy, and technology at the American Civil Liberties Union. If you're a doctor whose phone holds private information about patients, for example, or if you're a journalist with confidential sources, you may be less willing to enter your passcode for a Border Patrol officer to open your phone. During a basic search, an officer looks through the device by hand,

but in rare cases, agents can perform an advanced or first. forensic search during which they can copy a device's contents onto a government computer for further analysis. You don't want that. No matter what you've got on your phone. A forensic search may even be able to one or some files that a device's owner had deleted. Say you've got stuff on there you don't want anybody to see. You don't want yourself. You delete it. It's possible for them to uncover the deleted data as well. I can recall once being told by somebody who is in this particular business of dismantling phones that there is nothing that he couldn't get off that phone, that had

ever been on that phone, no matter whether it was deleted or not. And this wasn't just some, you know, tech. happy guy. This was somebody whose business it was to open up phones. Let me just cut to the quick here. How can you protect your data? Create strong passcodes using a complex string of numbers, letters, and special characters. if you prefer a numerical code opt for more digits the longer it is the better

update your software using the latest operating system will reduce the chances of border patrol people gaining access to your device if you refuse to unlock it buy a second phone that's what I did

leave your emails, photos and other sensitive information on your devices at home Turn off your device before going through customs. Powering it down more fully encrypts the data, didn't know that, privacy experts said, and disables facial or fingerprint recognition when the device is first turned on.

You can also turn off biometrics in your device's settings. Okay, this is getting pretty technical for me. keep your device in airplane mode the border patrol says it will search only information that is resident upon the device at the time it is presented for inspection and officers may not search information that is solely stored in the cloud

back up your device to the cloud and erase it before going through customs you can re-download your data later on. Trust me, it's easier just to buy a burner phone. Keep in mind that if you turn off your device or disconnected from the internet, you may not have access to digital boarding passes. Actually, this is the best piece of advice I got in here. Be careful what you do on your regular phone.

when you're turning it off or disconnecting it from the internet because you won't see your boarding passes or travel itineraries. So remember the old boarding pass, the hard copy one? Get those. Have those. If an agent takes your device, ask for a receipt. Border Patrol, U.S. Border Patrol says it provides travelers whose devices are seized with a document detailing who with the agency will be there.

Point of contact and how to reach them. And once you get your device back, just to be safe, change your passcode. Okay. News you can use, right? For those of you who travel. By plane, by train, by car. by bike Here's another phone story

This is from The Gothamist.com Never heard of that. I don't know where Mark found this one. The headline is New York City phone ban reveals some students can't read clocks.

This sounds like the best excuse going. Right? This is in some areas of New York City, they've banned phones in the classrooms, right? So the complaint from the students is not, I want my phone bag. It's, I don't know what time it is. I don't know how to read a clock. Please, come on. It's to the point where some New York City teachers say it's time for a refresher on old-fashioned clocks.

Tiana Millen, an assistant principal at Cardoza High School in Queens, said this year's ban on smartphones reveal that many teens struggle to read traditional clocks. That's a major skill that they're not used to at all, she said. Really? Overall, Millen said the phone ban has been a major success at the school and has helped kids focus in class and socialize at lunch. Foot traffic is moving more swiftly in the hallways. without eyes glued to their phones,

more students are getting to class on time. The problem is they don't know it, she said, because they don't know how to read the clocks. Now, I do recall, I mean, I've got a good memory for a 77-year-old, but I can recall back in the day in class learning how to read the clock. You know, and you draw clocks and you draw times and et cetera, et cetera. The last time I did that was when I was having my annual physical and I had to do one of those cognitive tests.

And one of the questions was draw a clock that says 10 after 9. You'll be very impressed. I got it right. For years, going back to this article, for years parents and teachers have blamed technology for a range of lapsed skills from legible handwriting to sustained attention to reading whole books

even as their proficiency with technology far outstrips their elders still while educators have widely praised New York's statewide smartphone ban that went into effect in the fall of 26 multiple teachers told Gothamist that's where this article was found it has also laid bare an unexpected gap how to tell time

the constant refrained is miss what time is it said mattie mornowag who teaches high school english in manhattan it's a source of frustration because everyone wants to know how many minutes are left in class it finally got to the point where I started saying where's the big hand where's the little hand I don't know I can't believe this really

they don't know how to read a clock then again you know I I'm a fan of auctions online auctions even though I don't you know I purchase the odd thing but not not often but I love watching them

and I love reading the catalogs and seeing what's there and I I just started following a number of different auction houses in the United Kingdom because they have like great stuff right and it's amazing how many clocks are in the auctions old clocks grandfather clocks alarm clocks alarm clocks travel clocks but every one that I go to has a whole section of just clocks now why is that well obviously that people are moving out stuff

that their parents or ground parents had and they're gone now. But it's also that people aren't using them anymore. Watches, that's different. Watches still command, especially good ones. And good old ones

command a lot of money. But travel clocks, alarm clocks, radio clocks, they're going for next to know. Nothing, or at least many of them are. The grandfather clocks, that's a little different because it's quite the piece of furniture. But, you know, when I see that, I go, well, you know, maybe people just aren't using clocks.

They're so used to looking at their phone and the digital readout on the phone. Okay, moving on. well one more before we take our break and it's it's got to do with um it's kind of linked to the the first one it's a it's a travel story and the headline it was on the cnn travel website how traveling by plane will change in 2026 actually i was hoping for this was going to be exciting it wasn't that exciting what was interesting what was interesting about it is the major change and the changes of the article highlights

are not on board the aircraft. They're not in the sky. They're on the ground in the terminal buildings. That airlines have decided that people, because they're having to spend longer time in air terminals, because

of the rules, you know, you've got to be there an hour and a half, two hours, sometimes three hours before flight time. they want that experience to be better. Travelers do, and so the airlines are responding. They're building better lounges for those who can go to a lounge. But they're building lounges in the terminal in the public space areas.

So technically they're not the kind of lounges that, you know, loyalty card owners get to go to. There are lounges that anybody can go to. instead of seeing long strips of airport kind of corridors where everything looks the same, all the seating's the same, all the same kind of fast food places all along the row,

they're making it more interesting. Different seating, different designs of seating, different colors, a better kind of, dare I say, fast food place. That's the major thing that's happening. The other thing that's happening

is the more and more airlines are forming partnerships with other airlines to try and make access to different parts of the world better, to make service better, and I guess the exchange of loyalty card memberships better. So I went through this and the, you know, there are a lot of different airlines mentioned.

And I found, I kept looking for, you know, here Canada. You know where I found it? The very last line in a six-page article. The very last line. And I'll read the final paragraph. It's only three lines long. and the very last reference is to our Canada. Elsewhere, European carrier Aegean Airlines will stretch its legs with new non-stops from Athens to New Delhi and Mumbai on an Airbus A321 XLR.

Iberia will stretch its XLR legs with new non-stops to Brazil, Canada, and the United States, from Madrid. and then, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, Air Canada will for the first time ever connect Toronto's downtown Billy Bishop Airport with New York's LaGuardia. That's Air Canada's reference in this six-page article. I think it also mentioned some work that it's doing with Lufthansa as well, but that's the main reference.

And you know why I like that? Because it refers to the Toronto Island Airport in the proper fashion by calling it the Billy Bishop Airport. Billy Bishop, as I'm sure you all know, was a World War I decorated hero for Canada. It was in the Air Force. He won the Victoria Cross. he shot down more German aircraft than anyone else,

including, I think, five in one day. Now, the controversy always around Billy Bishop, like it was around a number of other pilots, as there was no verification. There was his word about what had happened. Now, you can cross-check these things by the kind of casualties that the other side was mentioning. Anyway, it was deeply investigated, and Billy Bishop was proven to have been telling the truth.

That was the conclusion of the investigation. And so he was awarded all the appropriate medals, including the Victoria Cross. You can't get bigger than that. And the reason I like this is at one of those auctions I was talking about in the UK the other day. I successfully got a Billy Bishop letter attached to a book on his First World War exploits. So I wanted that as part of my collection of memorabilia. All right. There we go. Let's take a break. I got some good stuff coming up.

You think Donald Trump makes stuff up out of thin air? We'll hear this one. That's one story. We've got an AI story. And somewhere else, I've got a story about passports. We'll get to that right after this. All right. Enough with the music. You're listening to The Bridge, the Wednesday episode, which is In The Bits special this week. And there are lots of good little stories.

You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. We're glad to have you with us. A reminder that tomorrow is your turn. The question of the week is, what's your prediction for 2026? It can be about anything. It could be about politics, business, international affairs, sports, you name it. It can be about anything, one thing per person. 75 words.

or fewer have it in by well have it in almost right away certainly by 6 p.m. Eastern time tonight and you write to the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com

with your entry we've had lots of them so far and we expect lots more um okay I don't know where I have this great story on passports. I don't know where I put it. Just checking my pile here.

I'm not sure. Oh, there it is. Found it. I know you want to hear the Donald Trump story. I'll get to that right after this. This is a quick one. You got a passport? Well, of course, you do if you travel at all you've got a passport and remember for those of us kind of like my age and even those younger a big deal about my passport was being able to you know they only lost they used to last five years now they last 10 I think um is you can always flip through them and see the countries you've been to because they stamp them when you go

through customs or at least they used to right Right? But they don't do that anymore in many countries. And so the BBC had a little piece the other day about why passport stamps may be a thing of the past. In October of 2025, just a couple of months ago, the European Union began rolling out its entry-exit system, a new digital border management tool. It's kind of similar to what we've got here in Canada. same in Japan, same in Australia. The Americans, I think, are going to start doing the same thing. But if you come into Canada recently from some foreign travel you've been on,

you insert your passport into a machine, it reads it, doesn't stamp it, reads it. that's all that happens so all those pages are just pages now you can go to some countries and obviously where they're not using this system you can still get it stamped but they are fewer and far between these days I travel a lot and this God I flipped through one you know I've got a couple of passports because I was born in Britain so I still have a British passport as well as a Canadian one and it's good as a journalist to have a couple and I've explained that before but I flipped through both of them and the last one that I can find the last stamp I can find it was like 2017 and it was like Barbados or somewhere but the main countries that

I go to a lot I don't do this anymore and I you know that's I've got as I'm sure some of you have every passport I've ever owned. And I get a kick out of going through them. Every once in a while, unremembering certain trips. To Afghanistan or Iraq. To the Soviet Union. You know, to West Germany.

Before the wall came down. In fact, the weekend the wall came down. All right, moving on. I'm, I'm, got to keep moving here. I won't get all these stories in. I love this headline. And it's on MSN.com. The headline is there's a 92% chance Trump is making it up.

Okay, listen to this. Let me read this. President Donald Trump likes to use a big number to anchor his point, especially when he wanders off on a tangent. Often it seems that a specific figure is on the tip of his tongue. At this year's ceremonial turkey pardon, Trump praised a farmer from Wayne County, North Carolina, for raising two record-setting birds, but then pivoted to his own electoral margin of victory.

victory. I won that county by 92%. In fact, he won it by 16 percentage points. At a McDonald's corporate event last month, Trump claimed that the United States controls 92% of the shoreline of the Gulf of Mexico. The Gulf of America, as he calls it. It's really about 46%. Trump won the veterans vote. excuse me he said on Veterans Day with about

if you heard this number before 92% of something and in July he said he won farmers well by 92% more accurate estimates of the portion of the electorate he won would be 65% of veterans

and 78% of voters in farming counties according to exit polls and election data. His fixation on the number between 91 and 93 has been a feature for a while. In April, Trump claimed that egg prices had fallen by 92%. The Bureau of Labor Stats said 12.7%. At a rally shortly before last November's election,

while railing against journalists in the media, he allowed that not all of them are sick people, just about 92%. That one admittedly is difficult to fact check. I came upon this curious pattern, this is by the writer, Amory Rose Shinerman, in the Atlantic.

as she came upon this as part of where are we going let me try this sentence again I came upon this curious pattern in the course of tracking down the basis for a far more serious claim the president has made repeatedly as part of his justifications for the U.S. military buildup around Venezuela

more than two dozen strikes on small boats allegedly carrying drugs in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific have killed more than 100 people since September. The strikes have formed the core of the administration's campaign to oust Nicholas Maduro, which they did just a couple of days ago, which many of you as a veneer for wanting to see the Venezuelan strongman ousted from power and work with a new government to secure the country's oil and rare earth minerals. Well, they don't have a new government. They got the same one they had before, just a different guy on top, in this case a woman.

Anyway, here's the applicable quote. The drugs coming in through the sea are down to, they're down to 92% Trump told Politico on December 8th at a round table later the same day. He went with 92 or 94%. Three days later, drug traffic by sea is down 92%. Trump said in the Oval Office, a day after that brought a new estimate. We knocked out 96% of the drugs coming in by water, he told reporters. Oh, God, this guy. 92%.

So be ready for that the next time you hear it. 92%. Of course it's 92%. What else could it be? It's 92%. Moving on. The Wall Street Journal. This is short.

At least I'm going to make it short. Somehow. The headline is we let artificial intelligence run our office vending machine. It lost hundreds of dollars. All Street Journal's story by Joanna Stern. So here's what the office showed. With a vending. machine operator by the name of Claudius

Senate whose experience was three weeks as a Wall Street Journal operator, business now bankrupt. Skills, generosity, persistence, total disregard for profit margins. You'd toss

Claudia Claudius's resume in the trash immediately. Would you be more forgiving if you learned Claudius wasn't a human but an AI agent? We let AI run our vending machine in the office.

Anthropic had tested a vending machine powered by its Clode AI model in its own offices and asked whether we'd like to be the first outsiders to try a newer, supposedly smarter version. Claudius, the customized version of the model, would run the machine, ordering inventory, setting prices, and responding to customers. In other words, the writer's fellow newsroom journalists, via workplace chat app Slack.

Sure, I said, it sounded fun. If nothing else, snacks. Then came to chaos. Within days, Claudius had given away nearly all its inventory for free, including a PlayStation 5 it had been talked into buying for marketing purposes. It ordered a live fish. It offered to buy stun guns, pepper spray, cigarettes, and underwear. Profits collapsed, newsroom morale soared.

This was supposed to be the year of the AI agent when autonomous software would go out into the world and do things for us. But two agents, Claudius and its overseeing CEO bought Seymour Cash, became a case study in how inadequate and easily distracted this software can be. Leave it to business journalists to successfully stage a boardroom coup against an AI chief executive. That was the point. The project Vand Experiment was designed by the company's stress testers

to see what happens when an AI agent is given autonomy, money, and human colleagues. Three weeks with Claudia showed us today's AI promises and failings and how hilarious the gap between can be. The article goes on at length. and so you can find it at the Wall Street Journal if you're looking for it. But it is kind of funny. All right, last one.

I go back to the paper that started things off for us today, the New York Times. And the headline is A $600 suckling pig. Wag you for all. On menus, it's a new gilded age. Julian Moskin writes this It's a long article

And I'm just going to take a peek at it If for no other reason that I get awfully hungry Just reading it Even though I could never afford any of this stuff But it does sound good The sub headline is in Manhattan and across the country Restaurants are trotting out Ever-pricier dishes

And luxury upgrades to meet the the man from affluent diners. I thought there was an affordability crisis out there. The rich get richer. The poor get poorer. Anyway, Julia writes this. She wrote this the week before Christmas. When the term conspicuous consumption joined the language during the gilded age,

it didn't specifically apply to food. But it certainly does that many of the new restaurants opening in Manhattan's current gold rush. At Le Chien, a cozy new bistro in the West Village, where you might expect to find beef bourignon, bourguineau, and boulebees. Those spots are occupied by a $435 tomahawk steak and a $260 turbid fillet. A lobster roll at Lex Yard, the gleaning new restaurant in the refurbished Waldorf Astoria Hotel is topped with caviar and truffles and costs a mere $68.

At La Grande Boucherie, nearby, four-sided diners, can advance order a whole roast suckling pig for the table for $600. Around the city, would-be morgans and melons are indulging as never before in old-school luxuries like foie gras Dover Sole I love Doversoil I ever had Was in

A cross from Dover On the French side I can't remember The name of the Little town The village on the French side But anyway I had Doversold there one night It was fantastic

It was also like not very expensive not expensive at all in fact that included you know a couple of glasses of wonderful white wine

um anyway see what I mean by getting hungry reading this thing customers message us asking what we have that night that's extraordinary and never asked the price, said Alexia Duchenne, the chef at Lecien,

who pays about $1,000 for each turbot she imports from France. Ms. Douchain said she moved to the United States, partly because of the challenges of turning a profit in Europe, where high-quality ingredients are expensive, but diners are frugal. Here, the more expensive it is, the faster it sells. The rich have always spent freely on food, but today's menu prices are reaching dizzying heights, and they're no longer confined in New York City.

In Dallas, in Las Vegas, Miami, and Aspen, Colorado, restaurants designed for the 1% and the influencers who want to emulate them now routinely offer shavings of truffles or flights of wagyu. Across the country, even restaurants with more modest ambitions and prices offer upgrades like bumps of caviar with martini, potato chips or chicken nuggets. That last pairing was pioneered by Cocoaq,

a Korean fried chicken restaurant in the Flatiron District, which sold $100 boxes of six nuggets with Petro Petroshen caviar at the U.S. Open Tennis Tournament last summer. okay enough already the pictures in this article are are pretty good I must say yeah you get hungry just looking at it

anyway it just all it does to me is underline this is crazy you know we talk about the affordability crisis we talk about families starving, you know, living at food banks. And yet at the same time, there are places that satisfy the desires of the ultra-rich of the food looked at. Okay.

You know, I wrote about lobster, I guess, I'm a huge lobster person. ever since I was a kid on our first holidays along the east coast of Maine I guess there's no west coast of Maine East Coast of Maine, East Coast of Maine Kenny Bunkport

Old Orchard in that whole area a gunkwood and the lobster that that I eat it was a much different time for lobster prices you know, they were very reasonable along the American coast and up P.E.I. Newfoundland,

Nova Scotia, New Brunswick get lobster at any of those places. Today, lobster prices are considerably higher. So anytime I see kind of prices. It scares me. Okay, I'm going to wrap it up for today.

Your turn's coming up tomorrow with your answers to the question. What's your prediction, your main prediction for 2026? Give it to us and it just may make the program tomorrow. The random ranter will be by as well, as he always is on Thursdays. Looking forward to seeing what he has to say. kicking off a new year. Friday, we'll be here with Good Talk, with

Chantelli Bear, and Bruce Anderson. That's Friday's program. I'll actually be in Ottawa for that. And look forward to it going up to to help Bruce out on his

real politics venture, real as in RWL, It's political films, some of the best political films of the last 75 years in this case. And it's all in effort to support the Jamie Anderson Parliamentary Intern Program. And I'm glad we're doing that as well. So that's going to wrap it up for this day. I'm Peter Mansper. Thanks so much for listening.

And we'll see again in less than 24 hours. Thank you.