The Australian Border Force won’t stop searching me and my personal devices when I visit Australia. Despite being an Australian citizen, under Australian law I have zero recourse to this continued flagrant invasion of my privacy. After two years of harassment I am publicizing this as a considered next step in an effort to make it stop.
This is somewhat different from my usual articles about space, energy, and technology – we will return to that theme shortly. As far as possible, I will relate only facts and keep editorializing to a minimum. I will update this post as the situation evolves.
Personal Background
Please forgive my indulgence in some summary autobiographical information.
My name is Casey John Handmer and I was born in Australia in 1987. In 2010, I moved to the US, where I now live with my wife and three young children. In 2016 I obtained a US Green Card (under the National Interest Waiver) and in 2021, I completed naturalization and am now a dual citizen. My three children are also dual citizens.
I have a clean record. I have never been arrested, charged, or convicted of any crime in any jurisdiction. As far as I know I have never been suspected of, or investigated in relation to any crime anywhere on Earth. I have passed multiple stringent background checks, including to work on ITAR technology at NASA, to undergo pilot training, and to get a Green Card and US citizenship. I paid off my Australian student loans years ago. I pay my taxes. I have a public profile as a prominent technology writer and am frequently called upon to provide expert technical analysis across a variety of fields, including to various US government agencies as well as private companies. I see myself as being a person of upright moral character and believe that nearly everyone I have ever dealt with would attest to that fact. I should also state for the record that I am not now, nor have I even been, suicidal.
In addition to a pilot’s license, I also have a Bachelor’s of Science (Advanced Mathematics) from the University of Sydney, where I earned the University Medal for Honours in Physics, focused on sub-wavelength microscopy. In the US, I earned a PhD in theoretical physics from California Institute of Technology, graduating in 2015. My PhD was focused on high performance of gravitational waves as part of the research effort that resulted in the 2017 Nobel Prize, awarded in part to Kip Thorne, the founder of the research group with whom I worked. I met my wife Dr Christine Moran at a department party at his house in late 2014.
Following Caltech, I worked on magnetic levitation at the Hyperloop startup for 2.5 years, filing three patents. After I earned my Green Card, I went to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where I worked on GPS, AI, planetary mapping, and remote sensing for four years, overlapping with COVID and the birth of my two eldest children. In 2021 I left NASA to found Terraform Industries, a deep tech energy start up that’s making cheap synthetic fuel from sunlight and air. As Terraform’s founder and CEO, I am responsible for the successful operations of a company that employs about 20 people and looks to radically improve access to cheap clean energy for billions of people, including in Australia.
The Searches
In the past two years, I have been stopped and searched at the Australian border four times.
In the grand scheme of things there are worse problems to have and I have much to be grateful for. However, read on.
In all four cases, no reason was given for suspicion.
In all four cases, I was detained for over an hour.
In all four cases, all my personal belongings were thoroughly searched.
In the first three cases, I was forced to hand over passwords to personal electronic devices, despite objecting to this invasion of my privacy. In the fourth case, I brought only a “dumb phone” with no password or personal information.
In all four cases, my personal devices were searched out of my sight for extended periods.
In the first case, I was informed that the officer had the power to compel me to divulge passwords, despite this not legally being true. While it is technically not legal for ABF officers to coercively obtain passwords, their pattern of practice indicates that the front line officers believe they do have this power. Since there is no check on this power, no mechanism for due process or accountability, and no right to privacy, it is in fact de facto legal for ABF officers to coercively obtain passwords to travelers’ private electronic devices, then search through them for hours in some other place.
In the third case, I was informed that if I did not provide my phone passcode, the device, which I clearly communicated I depend on to travel, to provide my livelihood, and to run my business which then employed about 15 people, could be kept indefinitely for forensic examination. Obviously I found this sufficiently coercive to comply, albeit under protest.
In all four cases, I was told that I had been selected randomly, and no other reason for suspicion was provided. I have now confirmed this was not true, and that I am on the Movement Alert List. According to the ABF website, the MAL is for non-citizens. According to a 2013 audit, there were only 172 Australian citizens on the list at that time. What accords me this rare honour, I do not know.
In the first and third case, officers I dealt with seemed convinced I was attempting to traffic prohibited material – despite my allegedly random selection. For example, they repeatedly suggested that I knew what they were looking for and should just hand it over. I do not know and, according to their records, nothing was ever found. To be crystal clear, I have never used, sought, bought, trafficked, etc and have no interest in anything remotely related to the various categories of illegal material the ABF claimed to be interested in.
In the first and third case, my elderly parents were kept waiting in arrivals for over an hour with no way to communicate with me.
In the first case, my then four year old son was also subjected to over an hour of detention, after a 14 hour flight with me from the US.
In the first case, the officers’ hostile demeanor and specific statements caused me to fear that anything but enthusiastic cooperation would be used as grounds to separate me from my son.
In the first and second (I was also searched on departure) case, my son had traveled with me to celebrate my grandfather, Prof Tim Cartmill AO’s 90th birthday – my son is his eldest great-grandchild.
In the third case, I traveled for my grandmother’s 90th birthday.
My children are all dual US-Australian citizens, and now they are unable to visit their Australian family with me, including their grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins, because of ABF’s repeated and highly intrusive searches.
My children have been unable to accompany me on any subsequent trips because I genuinely fear they could be subjected to another detention, search, and possible forced separation. My children are enthusiastic travelers and love seeing their relatives. My six year old son is fascinated by WW2, where a desperate struggle by the allied nations defeated totalitarian forces who, among other things, embraced extremist notions of state power and selective destruction of personal liberty. When my grandparents were his age, they lived through it – some of the last people left who remember this event first hand. My children will grow up knowing that their great grandparents experienced WW2, but not much else, because for some secret reason the ABF is prepared to use them as leverage to coerce me to perform actions which are supposedly not allowed under Australian law. The irony is not lost on me.
Obviously, this pattern of harassment and restriction of my family’s rights is extremely distressing to my parents, friends, and other relatives.
In all four cases, I do not believe ABF found any prohibited material or items in my baggage, despite a thorough examination – in any case I was ultimately free to go. A recent FOIA confirmed that the ABF found “nil of interest” in any search.
In the first case, ABF’s search damaged my laptop computer’s file system, necessitating a lengthy and highly inconvenient restoration of pre-existing function.
In the third case, ABF activated a VPN app on my phone without informing me, and did not de-activate it, which inhibited my phone’s function until I discovered and fixed the problem.
In the fourth case, the ABF officer requested my assistance in unlocking my “dumb phone,” despite it having no password.
In the third case, I was repeatedly asked to divulge a master password for a standard password manager, containing access credentials used to operate my business and potentially compromising the privacy of my employees, which would be highly illegal under US law. I refused, resulting in detainment for another hour, and ultimately was allowed to show the officer in person that no, my password manager did not contain nuclear codes. The officer had expressed frustration that I didn’t just expose all this private information, but politely declined when I suggested that we subject his personal mobile phone to the same search, side by side.
In the third case, ABF seized a 256 GB USB drive, keeping it for months before bizarrely mailing it to my parents, not to me. I directed my parents to dispose of it.
In the third and fourth case, I was asked (and refused) to specify privileged technical details about the nature of the work I did for NASA, despite my legal obligation to not divulge aspects of that work. I subsequently contacted counter-intelligence officials at JPL who confirmed that the ABF has no legitimate interest in that information.
In the third case, I asked the officer whether we would be obliged to submit to mind-reading scans, if the technology existed. He replied that it was only a matter of time.
I am currently planning to enter Australia this coming Friday May 2 2025 on UA839. I will not be bringing my phone or laptop, but I will be carrying privileged attorney-client information. Check back here in a few weeks to find out if I was “randomly” detained and searched for a fifth time.
[Edit May 2025: First, thank you for the outpouring of support this post received. Thank you also to a few people who directed my attention to additional pieces of information that have allowed me to reconstruct exactly how I ended up on the Movement Alert List. I will share specifics in a future update.
During my most recent visit I was not detained or searched on entry or exit. Given that I was also not detained during my second visit of 2023, unfortunately I have no way of knowing whether this was a temporary reprieve, a procedural error, or if someone read this post and quietly removed me from the DHA’s list.]
[Edit November 2025: I am currently planning to enter Australia on December 21, 2025 flying UA839, along with my wife and three children. As before, check here afterwards to find out if I remain on the ABF’s Movement Alert List for terrorists, traffickers, and other international criminals.]
[Edit December 2025: We learned in the aftermath of the Bondi terrorist attack that one of the two shooters was also on the Movement Alert List and one of them was licensed to own not one, not two, but six firearms – an astonishingly high number for anyone in Australia. For those of you keeping score at home, Australian security agencies seem to have no difficulty harassing me, a law abiding citizen with an unblemished record. At the same time, they did not appear to have IS-sympathizing gun owners under surveillance, despite specific warnings from foreign intelligence services against a backdrop of hundreds of antisemitic incidents.]
Legal Context
To be crystal clear here, this is an invasive, extended, warrantless search. Like the US, Australia generally requires that police obtain a search warrant from a judge before seizing people or their devices – though in general Australian law is somewhat more restrictive than US law. There is no “Bill of Rights” in Australia, and no ability for a private citizen to bring such a constitutional matter before a court.
But in this case, there is no warrant. No due process. No accountability. No appeal. No information. No charge. No jury. No judge. No justice. No clarity on fate. No path to removal from “some kind of list”. Just empowered public servants burning thousands of taxpayer dollars harassing a law abiding citizen every time he returns to his own country.
For context, let me quote an email from the office of my Australian Member of Parliament, Kylea Tink, received on May 6, 2024.
“There is no doubt the ABF have broad powers, which is part of a broad trend in Australia since 9/11 in 2001. In the 23 years since 9/11, Australia has enacted more than 130 pieces of national security legislation. No other nation can match the volume of Australia’s counter-terrorism laws.
It is good to see that you have sought professional advice, and I think the idea of writing to the Ombudsman is a good one, as the accumulation of evidence about actual practices at the border would be the most effective basis for any political pressure for scrutiny, review or change. I do appreciate that this does not help you individually as you leave and re-enter Australia. Additional recommendations I have seen include:
- Ask for the name of the officer who is seizing the phone and the Electronic Examination Officer (EEO) who is going to examine the phone (noting that only a qualified EEO can examine the phone);
- Ask the ABF officer for the prescribed offence being investigated which gives rise to the power to seize your phone: “what am I being investigated for pursuant to section 187A(1)(b) of the Customs Act?” and
- Remind them that they must make notes of the reason why they have examined and copied your phone
Casey, I am sorry that there is not much that we can do from the electorate office in this situation when the ABF has such broad and sweeping powers. However, I would like to reassure you of the real value of you raising this with Kylea. It is really important for Kylea to be aware of the issues that have this kind of significant impact in people’s lives, and how legislative decisions made in Canberra play out in the real world.”
I was searched again in July 2024, followed this advice to the letter, and in all cases received non-responsive answers. I have also reminded officers that attempting to coerce passwords is not permitted, to which their response is (predictably) “We can seize your devices indefinitely for forensic examination.”
This is my Member of Parliament! Notionally, the ABF is accountable to Parliament, but in practice, a small Senate Committee has extremely limited ability to conduct oversight and apparently does not enforce that the ABF follow the law.
In addition to reaching out to my MP, I also reached out to Josh Taylor at the Guardian, who wrote this article. At the time, I elected to remain anonymous, as I had not yet exhausted all other avenues. I also predicted that the response would rhyme with “The ABF cannot comment on Dr Handmer’s specific case but typically only searches citizens who are strongly suspected of ties to terrorism or child exploitation material.” I would very much not like to be defamed by my own government!
I have also sought legal advice. Several lawyers, including a family friend and retired Senior Counsel gave essentially identical information as MP Tink. To paraphrase “wow that sucks, yeah, the law says ABF can essentially do whatever they want to you, sorry.” Maybe fifteen years in the US has fried my brain on liberty and freedom, but my Australian instinct of the “fair go” says that what the Australian Border Force is doing to me is not right.
I have also reached out via various acquaintances who may know people within the Australian government who could help me, including within the Australian Defense Force, the Department of Home Affairs, and up to the federal ministerial level, with no progress. This deeply disappoints me as I remember my paternal grandfather Walter Handmer AM spoke proudly of his career serving Australia as a diplomat all over the world within what is now DFAT.
I made a formal complaint through DHA (IMMI-24-13065) containing much of what is outlined above, sent May 6 2024. As of today, I have received no response.
So What Was In The FOIA Documents?
Following the systematic escalation pattern established throughout this process, I engaged Marque Lawyers to formalize the documentation trail and establish a formal record of governmental non-responsiveness. This strategic investment, despite its considerable cost, generated crucial evidence that ABF procedures lack both transparency and proportional implementation. The heavily redacted documents we obtained (example below) demonstrate precisely the institutional opacity this disclosure aims to address.
The FOIA process itself revealed procedural deficiencies: initial stonewalling through non-response, followed by improper claims of request expiration, eventually requiring Office of the Australian Information Commissioner intervention. These are not administrative oversights but systemic barriers to accountability that protect improper practices from scrutiny.
As the documents contain personal information, including of my children, I will not release all of them here. But this one is harmless enough. Do you think this meets the intent of the Freedom Of Information Act? What are they trying to hide?
There’s an election next weekend – perhaps you can ask Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton if they support this policy?
What did we discover in the documents that were finally released? I am on the Movement Alert List and according to this documentation, none of the searches discovered anything of interest to the ABF. During my most recent search, I traveled with the bare minimum: A couple of changes of clothes and toothbrush. The ABF officer, while professional in his demeanor, still filled the hour-plus searching every stitch on every seam of my underwear.
After two years of systematic documentation, formal complaints, and exhausting every available institutional channel, this public disclosure represents not just a search for answers but a deliberate accountability mechanism. The Australian public deserves transparency regarding how border enforcement powers are deployed against its own citizens, particularly those with no criminal history who contribute significantly to scientific, economic, and technological advancement.
The final irony is that I would not be surprised to find myself on a very short list of Australians whose particular esoteric technical knowledge could prove strategically vital to Australia’s territorial integrity and national security. I’m a patriotic defender of Western Liberal Democracy, I would even be flattered. But threatening my child and searching through all my personal files sure is a strange way to go about it.