The UK border agents (technically counter terrorism) can also stop you at the border, force you into a room, ask for your passwords to all your devices and you don't have the right to refuse.

You also don't have the right to a lawyer to be in a room with you and you are compelled to answer all their questions and they do not need to tell you why they stopped you.

Then if you are lucky they return your devices 7 days later after they have been through everything.

This guy went through it last year and talks bout what happens when they stop you: https://youtu.be/991kRp8KUmo?si=-5S1uLE7K9KG_gNj

> Border agents in America can search your phone or laptop without a warrant or sufficient suspicion at the border.

That is something that can happen at nearly every international border crossing. Before posting I tried to find a list of countries that require a warrant to search your stuff and the only place that came up was Hong Kong. New Zealand requires some suspicion, but that's effectively the same as they can simply state "they were acting suspiciously to my eye."

>Oh, and flock cameras and ICE aren't exactly a sign that America is this beacon of freedom that it likes to portray.

The US never said that you won't be observed in public nor that you can enter, remain, and travel freely around the country forever without permission.

I think the person you're replying to was talking about the UK, not the US.

What does the comment you’re replying to have to do with the US?

This reads like Soviet-era whataboutism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/And_you_are_lynching_Negroes

Yes, there are many cameras. But they're not interlinked, most of them record locally or to the chain's HQ, not some mass surveillance panopticon like TV shows portray.

US has Flock, ICE, PRISM and many other privacy horrors. I would much rather live in the UK than in the land of orange.

Worth recognising this was (and still is) mostly nonsense. There were loads of figures like "3 CCTV cameras per person" that included your local shop having a camera in the back, which has nothing to do with state surveillance. The police in the UK have significantly less power to surveil people than police in the UK. Council CCTV is shockingly rare now days.