Woman sues US border patrol over data copied from seized iPhone
An American Muslim citizen is suing the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) for seizing her iPhone at an airport, keeping it for 130 days, failing to explain why, and refusing to destroy whatever copies of her data that they might have grabbed, including photos of her when she wasn’t wearing a hijab, which she wears as an expression of her Islamic faith.
Rejhane Lazoja, a 39-year-old woman from Staten Island, N.Y., had her phone and its SIM card seized by border patrol agents on 26 February at Newark Liberty International Airport when she returned from a trip to Switzerland.
On Thursday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil rights group, announced that its New Jersey chapter had filed a case in federal court challenging the CBP’s “warrantless and unconstitutional seizure” of an American citizen’s phone.
