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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

#371

Post by refurb »

jeroenhd wrote: post #366
refurb wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A far better approach is for the US citizen to simply say "I chose not to provide my PIN". The officer will say something like "That's your choice, but I will need to seize the device to conduct an analysis. It will be returned once the analysis is complete". Then you shrug, and they will let you enter the US. The cops will try to get into the phone, fail, and return it to you. Just bring a phone you don't mind losin…

This person was under "investigation" for protesting against cop city. The authorities were waiting for him to turn up at a place where the law would give them more power. They were never going to let him just walk in. Eventually, they'd have to, possibly after lawyers and news would get involved, but it's not like saying "no" was going to end the ordeal right away.

Maybe, but being detained for a couple hours is better than committing a felony, no?

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

#372

Post by MrDisposable »

f-serif wrote: post #243
rock_artist wrote: post #236

For non-graphene users (eg. Boring iPhone people like me). So there’s a feature called Duress PIN which as explained through some comments means you put a different pin which intentionally wipes the phone. It’s not auto wipe or wipe after several failed attempts but intentional wipe of device. (Worth explanation as the current title nor the article doesn't easily explain this was made by the US citizen providing the…

PIN to wipe seems suspicious. How about a PIN where it login to a patriotic profile and phone looks like normal android.

This is exactly my setup with GrapheneOS. The default / main profile is patriotic, with a sterilized Telegram account, state-adjacent banks and apps, etc. The second profile (that uses a separate PIN) is not so patriotic: it has foreign bank apps, crypto apps, password manager, 2FA app, personal records, and an alternate Telegram account that I use to discuss any potentially unpatriotic topics with potentially unpatriotic people.

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

#373

Post by Aissen »

Following this being in the news, GrapheneOS wrote this post summarizing the data extraction defense: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/40700-grapheneos-protection...

On the duress pin, they say (read the whole thing though):

> People should carefully consider how to use it in an actual duress situation where there can be physical or legal consequences for wiping the device.

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

#374

Post by xg15 »

itake wrote: post #325
xg15 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know, that sounds like the kind of "I'm not touching you" defense that I don't think will convince anyone with common sense. It's obvious the wipe turned a search that could potentially find something into a useless search, so I don't see why the two should be treated as equivalent.

Imagine a safe containing sealed envelopes written in a code that only the owner understands. The police ask for the combination. The owner provides a combination that opens the safe, but the safe’s security mechanism first destroys its contents. The police can now inspect the safe but there are no documents left. Even if the documents had remained, they would still have been written in an indecipherable code unless…

You're making two arguments here, and I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think any of them would convince a judge.

> The owner provides a combination that opens the safe, but the safe’s security mechanism first destroys its contents. The police can now inspect the safe but there are no documents left.

> This person was complicit with the search: he gave the police access to search the safe.

The problem is that it's very obvious the police didn't want access to the safe because they like opening safes but to get the documents inside. The person denied that intent.

> ... written in a code that only the owner understands.

> Even if the documents had remained, they would still have been written in an indecipherable code unless the police also had the codebook.

This is an orthogonal argument basically saying "if the documents had also been encrypted, then there would have been no difference between destroying the documents and just leaving them encrypted".

First, that's not what was the case in the original situation - there is nothing saying there was secondary encryption on the phone.

Second, obviously, destroying documents and encrypting them is not equivalent because in the second case there is still an option to try and brute-force the code or try to decrypt them in another way.

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

#375

Post by blitzar »

dannyw wrote: post #18
Guvante wrote: post #6

How are they going to prove there was evidence of a crime? While destruction of potential evidence does introduce a certain amount of leeway that doesn't allow going from absolutely nothing to "evidence was on the wiped device". Most previous court cases involving encrypted devices have required substantial proof that the encrypted device contained incriminating evidence. To be clear "you sent this illegal thing from…

The career prosecutors at the DoJ are not the same as a couple years ago. I hope this case ends the same way as the sub sandwich assault.

They are not sending their finest to court it seems.

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

#376

Post by blitzar »

octoberfranklin wrote: post #64
crooked-v wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comment you're replying to was focused on prosecutorial incompetence, not benevolence.

Whether to prosecute or not is not an objective question of competence.

A trained chimp could have gotten prosecuted the sandwich.

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

#377

Post by ButlerianJihad »

itake wrote: post #213
andrewflnr wrote: post #190

Why the hell doesn't the "duress PIN" just open up a sanitary profile? Bonus points for letting you set it up with plausible data before designating it as the duress profile that, when opened, wipes your real profile in the background . > "the screen went blank, flashed several times, and the phone appeared to restart," How about flash some red lights and play an airhorn sound effect, too.

Just a guess… but they would just go back and ask him for the real pin if they saw the profile was empty. My understanding is phone’s security model aren’t designed for multiple user accounts

Recent Android releases have a Private Space feature, where you can hide not just files, but entire apps, their data, notifications, etc.

https://support.google.com/android/answer/15341885?hl=en

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

#379

Post by _ink_ »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #221
sfRattan wrote: post #25

Ultimately, when you choose to enter a duress PIN that will wipe your device, you have to recognize that choice may have legal consequences. I don't like the amount of power our government has at the national border when it comes to detaining and pressuring citizens, but our Constitution explicitly grants it at least some of the power it now exercises in that context. If your threat model includes US state actors at…

Not a lawyer, but destruction of evidence would only be valid if there was first some reasonable suspicion of a crime? Is that right?

Also, can they proof that there was evidence on the phone?

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

#380

Post by snovv_crash »

palmotea wrote: post #288
halestock wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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. It's worse than that: a lot of engineer types reason about almost everything as if it were code. It's a manifestation of Engineer's disease.

I now see engineers treating people like AI agents. It can always get worse...
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