I've been hearing about the US searching phones for many years, but not a single time for any other (non-dictatorship) country. The advice for travelling to the US in my circles is "wipe your device, install some believable bullshit, restore from backup when you're through". Not for any other "normal" country.

37signals has been having border crossing guidance at least since 2020. https://github.com/kspr9/basecamp-37signals-handbook/blob/ma...

The USA is definitely not thevonly one. Great Britain has also an extensive history of tyranical privacy-violating border crossing.

As is Israel and Russia.

The point is, the deeper you look, the better you understand how wide-spread the practice is.