A serious actor would have a cover phone that was their main phone and had truly been used for everything they did, other than eee-ville, for months or years. Either that or they'd be a completely in-character business traveller with a blank corporate loaner phone in accordance with the actual policy of some company they actually worked for. Whatever best matched who they claimed to be.

Their eee-ville devices would stay at home. If they needed ee-ville data, they'd download from the cloud, probably into a new device, after passing the border.

I mean, yeah?

No non-idiot criminal or terrorist was going to ever get picked up at the border. It’s the equivalent of getting arrested with 60lbs of pot in your trunk when you got pulled over for speeding through a red light in a car with a burned out headlight.

It’s especially hilarious going though this shit as a Canadian crossing into the US.

Like, if I drove a mile east or west I’d literally have to “off road” my way through a dozen feet of grass and I’d be over the border. I mean, shit, look at places like Point Roberts. Literally crossing some roads moves you between countries. In others the only reason you’ll know you moved between countries is a vaguely angry sign saying if you walk past it it would be illegally entering the US.

The whole thing was only ever going to catch dumb criminals. And yet it’s done well enough that they keep doing it.