Imagine you live in the western United States and are planning a vacation to Europe, returning with a connecting flight somewhere on the east coast. When you arrive in the U.S., the government may invoke the Border Search Exception to search — and even fully copy — your electronic devices, all without a warrant. But because of the chaotic state of Fourth Amendment law for border searches, you’ll face one rule if you fly into Logan International Airport in Boston, an entirely different rule if you arrive at Hartsfield Airport in Atlanta, and a third rule if you land in Dulles Airport outside Washington DC. A fourth rule will govern searches if you land at JFK or LaGuardia Airport in New York City, but if you land just outside New York at Newark International Airport, a fifth rule applies. And if you opt to avoid a connecting flight and land directly on the west coast, a sixth rule will be used.

With the stakes as high as the government being able to copy every sensitive email, photo, and document on your phone — without a warrant— how has the law become so convoluted? It is because each of those airports are located in a different appellate court’s jurisdiction, and those courts have disagreed on the scope of the Border Search Exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement.

Warrantless border searches became a feature of U.S. law long ago, well before the digital age. The power of Customs agents to search property entering the United States was established in the late 1700s, and the Supreme Court acknowledged warrantless border search authority in cases in the late 19th century and early 20th century. It formally recognized border searches by Customs agents as an exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement in the 1977 case U.S. v. Ramsey.

This out-of-date rule, created to help detect dangerous contraband as it is smuggled into the country, is a poor fit for the digital age and dangerously broad when applied to personal electronic devices like smart phones. Now that individuals carry as much sensitive information in their pocket as they could possibly store in their entire home, the Border Search Exception needs an update.

In 2014 the Supreme Court addressed this precise problem for another exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement: searches conducted during arrests. The Court refined the Search Incident To Arrest Exception to the warrant requirement, blocking its application to electronic devices. It noted that “Cell phones differ in both a quantitative and a qualitative sense from other objects” individuals carry and that “[p]rior to the digital age, people did not typically carry a cache of sensitive personal information with them as they went about their day.” Though these same considerations apply at the border, the Supreme Court has not yet stepped in to similarly limit the Border Search Exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement. Instead, the law has become a complex patchwork, with appellate courts setting out a range of rules.