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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

#431

Post by schoen »

realusername wrote: post #406
schoen wrote: post #383

I co-wrote a border search guide for EFF some years ago. I was very interested in finding clever technical approaches but I later ended up feeling that I hadn't given enough thought to the overall threat model questions (even though the guide did address them, perhaps even somewhat usefully). The big picture problem is that the agents performing the searches have an enormous amount of power in terms of potentially se…

> The big picture problem is that the agents performing the searches have an enormous amount of power in terms of potentially seizing devices and potentially denying entry for non-citizens. I think they should not have this power, but the agents and courts probably don't care that I think that. That's the reason I never traveled to the US and never will, just having IT security in your CV is enough to make the border…

Note that border searches of electronic devices are extremely rare overall. There were some statistics from CBP implying a base rate lower than 1 in 10,000 (I think lower than 1 in 100,000) border crossings.

I do know two people who have experienced them as a result of the government taking a personal interest in them, so it's certainly not impossible. However, it's not a common experience.

I've personally experienced searches of my suitcases about four times in about 100 U.S. border crossings (as a U.S. citizen, but the people performing or directing those searches generally didn't know my citizenship status), and zero electronic device searches.

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

#432

Post by [deleted] »

teravor wrote: post #16
Grimblewald wrote: post #2

VeraCrypt has a cool function which is a reserved space for a decoy OS.[1] Everything else registers as free space while decrypting to dummy volume. You make the dummy volume look lived in, and forget. provide dummy password, volume decrypts such that only dummy is accessible/readable. give proper password, real OS and FS decrypt and load. Something like this may need to become the standars over duress pins which sho…

this will likely fail as block devices aren't dumb anymore, the firmware state will out the hidden volume. counting on the laziness/unsophistication of an adversary isn't a great move. this problem may be solvable by a purpose-built abstraction where every write no matter what address will look identical to the firmware (naively, a randomized key-value map).

[deleted]

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

#433

Post by hahahaa »

chii wrote: post #287
runjake wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm waiting to see whether he is convicted before I form a strong opinion around this. I'm leaning toward thinking this case will be dropped or at least severely reduced charges.

There's a chilling effect from even just the arrest.

Oh this. Poor people lose their job because of an arrest. Arrest = homeless = dead sooner.

Best outcome is he successfully sues for the violations.

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

#434

Post by Brian_K_White »

kmeisthax wrote: post #258
TheDong wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was really well written in "What color are your bits": https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23 Programmers have trouble seeing color (two identical numbers are the same bits, how can typing '1234' to unlock one phone be legal, and '1234' to unlock another phone be illegal?) Courts care about color (intent, provenance, permission), even though that color cannot be digitally represented.

"Color" absolutely can be represented digitally; C compilers were doing it before we even knew they were doing it. We just like getting away with shit. It's part of the hacker ethos. Probably.

You've just merely exhibited the symptom of being blind to all the colors which cannot be represented, not proven or shown that there are none.

All of a things properties are not contained in or expressed by the thing itself.

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

#435

Post by jeroenhd »

refurb wrote: post #371
jeroenhd wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It depends on how "native" you look perhaps, but you can be detained for more than a week and a half if the border authorities don't like you: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/20/us-citizen-j...

Of course they shouldn't do that to US citizens, but they also shouldn't be targetting protestors they have a personal gripe with.

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

#436

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft »

Aurornis wrote: post #180
godwinson__4-8 wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"U.S. law though is highly non-autistic" hilarious but also another point to emphasize is how truly depressing American courts often are. Take the right to a jury. It sounds noble in theory. But when they say judged by your peers they don't mean your actual peers. It's people who couldn't get out of jury duty. Prosecutors have high success rates. Federal prosecutor success rate is over > 90%. Studies of jury psycholo…

> Federal prosecutor success rate is over > 90%. This is a misunderstood statistic. Federal prosecutors won't even pursue cases unless they think there's a high chance of success. They don't operate like two private parties suing each other to force the court to decide something. If the evidence is there or the charges aren't fully formed, they don't waste resources on it. This leads to a contradictory set of complai…

They never pursue court trials, because it's too much work. But they'll pursue plea deals, because there's this gigantic pipeline and everyone in it (including public defenders) is on the same team: Team Make Him Plead.

Because of this, no true justice is possible. Trials don't just try the defendants, it forces the prosecutor to prove that there really was a case and that they weren't just trying to bully someone who felt it was hopeless and would rather get out of pre-trial jail early. It forces the cops to actually make a fucking case, rather than rely on horseshit to lock someone away that can't bond out.

And no reform is possible. If you explain any of this to someone who actually understands it, they panic and say "but the prosecutors wouldn't even be able to bring 1/50th of those cases to trial, the system would overload" as if that were a bad thing that they couldn't. In the same way that you're not caught in a traffic jam but rather you are traffic, you're not caught up in these problems... your apathy, your ignorance, your rejection of boat-rocking, in short you are the problem.

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

#437

Post by matwood »

schoen wrote: post #383

I co-wrote a border search guide for EFF some years ago. I was very interested in finding clever technical approaches but I later ended up feeling that I hadn't given enough thought to the overall threat model questions (even though the guide did address them, perhaps even somewhat usefully). The big picture problem is that the agents performing the searches have an enormous amount of power in terms of potentially se…

> I think they should not have this power, but the agents and courts probably don't care that I think that. ...

> and about not angering the agents more than you plan to

When I was a teenager (long ago at this point), I got into an argument with a police officer over surfing in a certain area. It was pouring down rain, so he was annoyed he had to sit outside and wait for my friends and me to come to shore. Once we got in, he was telling me that he could take my surfboard and my car, and all other craziness. Being the dumb smart-ass I was at the time, I laughed and told him he was full of shit, among other things. He went to take a swing at me but his partner grabbed him.

We all go to court and the judge immediately dismisses the case against all my friends. I had a lawyer with me that I knew and he went to talk to the cop and when he came back over he goes "I don't know what you did, but that cop hates you." I get up in front the judge and he praises me for understanding the law (and I could still see the cop was visibly pissed), but then says he can't have me disrespecting and being a smart-ass to his cops and gave me community service that once completed whatever the ticket was would go away.

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

#438

Post by schoen »

jjbinx007 wrote: post #428
ifwinterco wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I thought this was the standard solution? People have been doing this since way back in the TrueCrypt days - IIRC you could configure it to run a whole fake version of Windows if you wanted without easily revealing your actual main volume. Most hardware crypto wallets also have a "duress wallet" feature where you keep a low balance for the same reason. Wiping is obviously extremely suspicious and asking for troub…

"Wiping is obviously extremely suspicious and asking for trouble" It's sad this is the default view. It's his device, his data, his life on that phone. If he had wiped the phone before the interrogation it wouldn't be a problem. How long before? A second before? A week before? But wiping the data a minute later is suddenly asking for trouble.

I don't know that there is case law on this but I imagine that "prior to the admissibility inspection" is likely to be treated differently from "during the admissibility inspection" or "during administrative detention or secondary inspection" (or "in response to a request or question by a border agent"!).

Edit: a bigger picture question is the difference between things that may be legally punishable and things that may cause suspicion from CBP agents, which aren't the same thing at all.

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

#439

Post by coldtea »

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…

In general a government can do whatever they can get away with.

The rest (believing they can't do this or that, because it's in some constitutional document, or violates a basic right) is sovereign citizen kind of self-delusion.

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

#440

Post by ifwinterco »

jjbinx007 wrote: post #428
ifwinterco wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I thought this was the standard solution? People have been doing this since way back in the TrueCrypt days - IIRC you could configure it to run a whole fake version of Windows if you wanted without easily revealing your actual main volume. Most hardware crypto wallets also have a "duress wallet" feature where you keep a low balance for the same reason. Wiping is obviously extremely suspicious and asking for troub…

"Wiping is obviously extremely suspicious and asking for trouble" It's sad this is the default view. It's his device, his data, his life on that phone. If he had wiped the phone before the interrogation it wouldn't be a problem. How long before? A second before? A week before? But wiping the data a minute later is suddenly asking for trouble.

I don't like it and I wish we had more privacy, but realistically there is no such "right".

If you're going to be in a situation where you're in a room with some goons backed by the full power of the state, it is what it is.

Maybe because I'm not American I don't have any hangups about seeing the US government this way, but my own government is no different - you can (and people have) get stopped at Heathrow, taken to a dimly lit backroom and given a going over for hours

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