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US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search

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Re: US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search

#271

Post by teravor »

vlovich123 wrote: post #49
greyface- wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern SSDs are log-structured under the hood. The presentation to the host system as a random access block device is an abstraction on top of that, emulating the semantics of spinning rust. Inspecting the underlying log will reveal the location of the hidden area, even if it looks random when read linearly.

I’m not so sure that log structure would reveal to you VeraCrypt style hidden volumes. It would only tell you about which blocks are allocated but the whole point is that VeraCrypt would allocate the whole space and within it have hidden space. You wouldn’t be able to infer (at least ethically, but you could lie) whether or not a hidden partition exists because you don’t know if the allocated block is present in the…

> allocate the whole space

what do you imagine allocation is in this context? it's just a set of written blocks that mark address ranges and other metadata for the OS filesystem driver (all encrypted).

firmware metadata will leak the fact that there is churn in the address range where a potential hidden volume lies. the churn will be inconsistent with filesystem activity that would be present in its absence.

it's not just SSDs you need to worry about either, HDD firmware also keeps metadata, some of it could be be proxy to churn by region.

Re: US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search

#272

Post by crusty »

This sends like a more-info-requiered situation. Per this article, the LEOs seemed to be fishing, so they presumably couldn't claim as a matter of fact that evidence had been destroyed. Also, claiming destruction of property seems unreasonable since the phone, the property, still exists as before. If I sell my phone, I'm going to wipe it. I think we all understand that it would be ludicrous for the buyer to claim I was destroying the phone, the property they've been sold, by doing so.

Even if the accelerated executive capture of the judiciary is largely ruled back post Trump (big IF), I fear the government will be unwilling to pay with much of the convenience of rule-by-law that it's been given a taste for.

Re: US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search

#274

Post by patrick451 »

DANmode wrote: post #186
a34729t wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. People complain police dont prevent crime, but dont realize that is not their purpose. The police exist to protect the government, not the people.

Which part of the government protects the people?

None of it

Re: US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search

#276

Post by dns_snek »

tbrownaw wrote: post #165
mikeweiss wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's insulting

What's the less insulting but similarly concise way to make the same substantive point?

The law is teleological. As in:

> When interpreting EU law, the CJEU pays particular attention to the aim and purpose of EU law (teleological interpretation), rather than focusing exclusively on the wording of the provisions (linguistic interpretation).

https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2017/5993...

https://definitions.lsd.law/teleological-interpretation

Re: US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search

#277

Post by crtified »

sfRattan wrote: post #92
cameldrv wrote: post #74

I’ve seen a lot of people on the internet over the years say things like “the government can’t make x illegal, it’s just y.” For example, the government can’t make wiping your phone at the border illegal, it’s just punching four numbers into your phone, just like a pin, only a different four numbers, which could just have well been your pin. U.S. law though is highly non-autistic and what you were trying to do is jus…

> U.S. law though is highly non-autistic and what you were trying to do is just as important as what you superficially did. Love this way of putting it. Stealing for future conversations with fellow software developers.

Why even choose a mental health condition as the linguistic pivot point for a zingy social phrase?

Re: US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search

#278

Post by patrick451 »

aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA wrote: post #166
randallsquared wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> U.S. law though is highly non-autistic When the judge and officers of the court agree with me, the law is reasonable and just, but when they do not agree with me, the law is arbitrary and capricious. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Having the law be whatever it's thought to be by police, prosectors, judges, and others can lead to obvious injustices, but there's been no serious attempt to remove ambiguity in any country's legal code as f…

It’s impossible to remove (even just nearly) all ambiguity. People already complain that there are too many laws on the books.

If there were fewer laws, there would be less to disambiguate.

Re: US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search

#279

Post by mrtksn »

halestock wrote: post #79
cameldrv wrote: post #74

I’ve seen a lot of people on the internet over the years say things like “the government can’t make x illegal, it’s just y.” For example, the government can’t make wiping your phone at the border illegal, it’s just punching four numbers into your phone, just like a pin, only a different four numbers, which could just have well been your pin. U.S. law though is highly non-autistic and what you were trying to do is jus…

A lot of engineer types forget that the law is not code, and reductionist arguments almost never actually work in practice because it's a human interpreting the law.

Maybe this is because of the TV dramas where a genius lawyer saves their client through an obscure technicality. It looks exactly like hacking a system using a 0-day exploit.

Re: US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search

#280

Post by lelanthran »

deejaaymac wrote: post #73
sfRattan wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Edit for the confused and misinformed: 18 USC 1001. Also, is ≠ ought. Lying to a federal officer is a crime, IIRC, and if the lie results in destruction of evidence, the person who told the lie is probably accountable for both crimes. This isn't a lie with plausible deniability: you have to set a duress PIN, understanding what it does, and then communicate that PIN instead of the unlock PIN. A duress PIN to wipe the…

>Lying to a fed They asked for the pin, maybe they should have said "not the duress pin" >Destroying evidence How did they know there was any evidence on there? >it exists for when compromising the device could get people the owner cares about killed or disappeared and the owner considers their own liability, disappearance, or death a preferable outcome. No, the duress pin is there for when I'm under duress and being…

> >Lying to a fed

> They asked for the pin, maybe they should have said "not the duress pin"

The law doesn't work like that. Unless you're provably at the developmental level of a 5 year old, the court knows you know what was required, and also knows what you intended when you gave the duress pin.

The justice system famously never plays "simon says"...

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