More than basic details: What border officials know about you

“I have been wondering about what information is actually contained in your passport data,” writes Traveller reader Judi LeVine of Manly, NSW. “In the past it seems as though the immigration people have spent a rather long time staring at their screens after they have scanned my passport and I am wondering what they are looking at? Is all of your past travel history there to peruse or is there other information about your identity or some other history?”

Border security officers can see far more than your basic details when you are arriving in a country.Credit: Getty Images

The answer is, all of the above, plus a whole lot more that you probably wouldn’t expect. If you want a short answer, it’s not so much what immigration officers can see about you, but what they can’t.

What an immigration officer sees when they scan your passport

In a typical case, the officer has access to the chip embedded in an e-passport, the Passenger Name Record (PNR) submitted by an airline and information from security databases. Passport details include the traveller’s full name, date and place of birth, nationality, passport number, issuing state, expiry date and a digitised copy of the passport holder’s photo. They can also see the traveller’s visa type, validity dates and any refusal-of-entry records or previous overstays.

Meanwhile, the camera at the immigration booth compares the image of the passenger with the one stored in the chip and makes a match or no-match response. In some countries, including the US, European Union nations and Australia, the immigration officer can also see every recorded entry and exit to the country, and overstays, remarks and, in the case of the EU, days remaining under the Schengen area’s 90-day rule. The security database is sourced from Interpol, national watch lists and terrorism and criminal databases.

The secrets your PNR number holds

The PNR is the six-digit string of characters and numbers, also known as a booking reference number or record locator, that a passenger is assigned when they make an airline booking. Far more than just a record of a flight booking, the PNR links to a trough of information. Much of that information overlaps with what is available from the passport chip, but there’s more data relating to the traveller’s movements including all flight segments on that booking with dates and times, connecting flights and seat numbers, fare class, how the passenger paid for their ticket, the number of checked bags, the source of the booking, travel agent contact information, meal preference, visa information, travel authorisations and names of other passengers travelling on the same reservation and email address. Most commercial airlines will send the PNR records of all passengers on a flight to the destination country some 48 to 72 hours before a flight departure.

The PNR record also links to Advance Passenger Information System (API) data, which backs up some of the PNR data but may also include more granular details, such as a traveller’s destination address in some countries. API data is collected at the check-in desk or before boarding an international flight. Australia was an early adopter, requiring airlines to send API data as early as 2000.

Following the attack on New York’s World Trade Centre in 2001, the US government required international airlines to transmit PNR and API records in advance of arrival. Between 2014 and 2017, the United Nations Security Council passed multiple resolutions requiring the sharing of API and PNR data. A handful of countries such as the US, the UK and Australia require Interactive API for incoming passengers, which delivers a board/no board response at the check-in desk.

Regardless of whether an incoming passenger fronts up to an immigration officer or passes through a passport reader, the same information is available, and checked.

Other data sources that dig deeper

As well as the information available on an e-passport chip and also from PNR and API, many countries work with tech companies that dig deeper to create profiles on individual passengers. By accessing the PNR data, these companies can monitor who is on the move. In real time they can delve into databases to sift for evidence of previous criminal activity such as drug dealing, terrorism or human trafficking, characteristics or, potentially, online activity that might raise a red flag, a process known as predictive data surveillance.

One of the leaders in this field is SITA, which specialises in information technology for the aviation industry. In a SITA document titled Electronic Border Management for Africa, the company cites several benefits of its Advance Passenger Processing methodology, including advance risk assessment, evidence of denial of boarding, faster clearance of passengers and, striking a more sinister tone, “Information … on what people are doing, not just who they are”.

Australia is one of about 75 countries that use SITA’s border management technology. Australia’s Border Force (ABF) has been using SITA’s services for screening as early as 2016, although the relationship between SITA and the Department of Immigration and Border Protection began in 2000, when Australia was preparing for a visitor influx for the Olympic Games.

How data scraped from social media posts can be used to deny entry

Deep-level scanning can have unfortunate consequences for passengers. In June 2025, Alistair Kitchen departed Melbourne for a two-week stay in New York. When the aircraft landed in Los Angeles, he was detained and interrogated for 12 hours by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials. Ultimately, he was refused entry and made to return to Australia. The reason? During the time when he’d lived in New York as a master’s student at Columbia University, Kitchen wrote about students’ protests in support of Gaza before returning to Australia in 2024. The comments were published on his personal blog, and even though he’d deleted sensitive political blog posts before his aborted journey to the US, CBP had flagged him as a person of concern.

During his interrogation by CBP officers, Kitchen’s phone was examined, a common occurrence for passengers who raise suspicions. Australia’s Border Force has the same powers. Under the Cybercrime Act 2001, the ABF can request and require you to unlock your phone. They can then remove it from your presence, inspect it and download anything you have stored on it. According to an ABF spokesperson, individuals can refuse to comply with a request for inspection of an electronic device, but they might be “referred for further law enforcement action”. Searching the contents of your phone would require a warrant, but not your permission.

Kitchen doesn’t know how CBP found out about his posts, but it’s possible that border control or an agency operating on its behalf has the task of scraping social media, looking for statements, sentiments or arguments that don’t accord with those of the Trump administration, and that’s a prairie-sized minefield.