TSA asking to see cell phone

Question

Traveling in the US.

My plane ticket showed TSA precheck, so I was able to keep shoes on.

I put everything in my book bag/ carryon, and ever the paranoid person, asked my wife to go first and grab my stuff.

Sure enough I was picked for a random search. Here’s the question - does TSA have the right to ask to see my phone?

He did, and I told him I checked it in my bag, no way to get it. He wasn’t happy with that answer, but after repeating “so you have no possessions on you?” twice and me answering “no”, he swabbed my hands and let me go.

If I did have my phone, what exactly would he have done? Asked me to turn it on? Start looking through it?

Answer 1

When you are randomly selected for additional screening (which is a core part of TSA PreCheck as well as TSA procedures in general), the additional screening applies to you and all of your possessions.

TSA knows that almost every passenger going through security has a cell phone, so when you didn't have one they queried that fact - if for no other reason than the fact that it was different to normal, which is one of the things they are trained to look for.

If you had shown them your phone, they would have likely, at most, swabbed it along with your hands. They would only have asked you to turn it on if they had specific suspicions about it not being a legitimate phone. Per TSA policy, they would NOT have looked through the contents of the phone.

In this particular case, you lied to the TSA official. That single action could have resulted in a very different outcome if your lie had been detected.