Privacy advocates now have a number: Customs personnel roughly doubled their searches of electronic devices at the nation’s borders in the last six months, conducting nearly 15,000 searches of traveler phones and computers between October and March, according to numbers released by Customs and Border Protection.

Capitol Hill lawmakers — including Colorado Rep. Jared Polis — alarmed at what they feared was becoming an indiscriminate, invasive and time-wasting practice have been waiting on the information for weeks.

The Associated Press reported in February that electronic media searches rose last year, from 5,000 to 24,000.

Today’s data will surely fuel lawmaker concerns.

Polis earlier this month joined Rep. Blake Farenthold, a Texas Republican, and Sens. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, and Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, in introducing the “Protecting Data at the Border Act.” The bill would extend constitutional protections against searches and seizures to border crossings and airport customs offices, requiring border officials to secure a warrant from a judge. The bill also would require agents to inform citizens of their rights before asking them to either hand over their devices or to reveal online account information.

“The government should not have the right to access your personal electronic devices without probable cause,” Polis said in a statement on the bill. “Whether you are at home, walking down the street, or at the border, we must make it perfectly clear that our Fourth Amendment protections extend regardless of location.”

“This bill makes sure that border agents are focused on criminals and terrorists instead of wasting their time thumbing through innocent Americans’ personal photos and other data,” said Wyden.

Mother Jones reported at the end of March that requests filed by Wyden for information about airport and border searches of digital devices had gone unanswered.

“It’s very concerning that [the Department of Homeland Security] hasn’t managed to answer my questions about the number of digital searches at the border, five weeks after I requested that basic information,” Wyden told the magazine March 28. “If [Customs and Border Patrol] were to undertake a system of indiscriminate digital searches, that would distract it from its core mission, dragging time and attention away from catching the bad guys.”

The New York Times reported Tuesday that a lawsuit filed against the Homeland Security Department by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University alleges that customs officers and special Homeland Security agents have seized and searched the electronic devices of thousands of people, including citizens, without suspicion, a possible constitutional violation.

— john@coloradostatesman.com