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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

#571

Post by mlrtime »

nostrademons wrote: post #386
helterskelter wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got selected as juror once just hoping to laugh at anything the cops said on the witness stand and let some poor soul go free but it turns out the defendant was just a violent scumbag who stabbed random people in public, and there was a video of it. After we decided he was guilty, they listed other things he had been convicted of and asked if he was a repeat offender... Let's see, shot somebody in the back, robbed…

I just served on a jury and in our case, the cop was a lying scumbag, the prosecutor's expert witnesses were people milking the taxpayers to provide the evaluations that the state wanted to hear for thousands of dollars per hour, the defense's expert witnesses copy-and-pasted an evaluation from another client but didn't bother to proofread before the prosecutor brought up that they had the wrong name in the text, and…

"I feel like many court cases are textbook instances of Everyone Sucks Here. I needed therapy after the case because it had so shaken my faith in both the justice system and humanity."

I really don't think most of the people posting here understand what the professionals working in criminal justice/law see on the average day. They see the worst of the worst on one side, and then the public who they are trying to get a paycheck to defend on the other attacking them.

This in no way excuses bad behavior, but we're all human and these people aren't robots.

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

#572

Post by nkrisc »

reenorap wrote: post #294
nkrisc wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if the prosecutors can make a convincing argument that your intent was exactly that all along, then you may end up convicted anyway. Intent matters. It might be hard to prove, but it matters. It may not even be that hard; what other possible explanation is there for someone putting a PIN visible on their phone that wipes it while crossing a border?

There’s no way to prove intent if you keep your mouth shut and don’t answer anything.

That’s good advice to not talk, but it won’t necessarily save you.

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

#573

Post by InsideOutSanta »

saalweachter wrote: post #563
antihero wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if the smarter thing to do would be to quietly nuke it as soon as it becomes clear that you'll be detained, so they can't really know that it wasn't already blank (IE you aren't nuking it in their presence).

The smarter thing to do is to just wipe your phone of everything you don't want border patrol to see before going to an airport.

With self-hosting, it's possible to easily bootstrap a clean phone with all your data and passwords from scratch, without relying on any third-party cloud services. The only thing you need to bring across the border is your brain (which contains the most basic information on how to set up your password manager) and maybe some kind of 2FA generator. Your password manager then contains all the other information you need to get everything running.

I don't think it ever makes sense to transport actual data across borders if you care about governments gaining access to it.

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

#574

Post by MrDisposable »

dMnFCX wrote: post #530
MrDisposable wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 unpatr…

It's absurd that you have to do this and/or be so careful. But if you live in Russia, China, or another dictatorship, then I understand.

Yep, full agreement here. The amount of hoop-jumping is ridiculous. However, I live in Russia so I have to do all that, plus some more (e.g. the work to protect my own self-hosted VPN after Roskomnadzor issued the recommendation for big Russian online services to sniff out and report user's VPN settings).

I spent two weeks thinking about my new setup on Graphene OS and Windows, but it was time well spent. Before that, my checklist for pre-border-crossing cleanup required about 8 hours of work. With the new setup, I can complete the cleanup in about an hour, and restoring takes even less.

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

#575

Post by expedition32 »

helterskelter wrote: post #340
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of us report for jury duty just itching to nullify something. Don't you? Checks and balances...

I got selected as juror once just hoping to laugh at anything the cops said on the witness stand and let some poor soul go free but it turns out the defendant was just a violent scumbag who stabbed random people in public, and there was a video of it. After we decided he was guilty, they listed other things he had been convicted of and asked if he was a repeat offender... Let's see, shot somebody in the back, robbed…

I don't understand the jury system. If your server is down you don't grab randos from the street to fix it.

Hell Americans know this too which is why you have a professional judge and lawyers. And you guys don't have a night watch with pitch forks and muskets to police the village anymore.

A jury system is an anachronistic relic.

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

#576

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

helterskelter wrote: post #340
__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of us report for jury duty just itching to nullify something. Don't you? Checks and balances...

I got selected as juror once just hoping to laugh at anything the cops said on the witness stand and let some poor soul go free but it turns out the defendant was just a violent scumbag who stabbed random people in public, and there was a video of it. After we decided he was guilty, they listed other things he had been convicted of and asked if he was a repeat offender... Let's see, shot somebody in the back, robbed…

Some people suck. Some of the people who suck are poor and physically violent, some are rich and politically and economically violent.

There's a kind of fog of incomprehension over indirect crimes which makes them much easier to get away with.

People still die though.

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

#577

Post by lefra »

hn_submit wrote: post #547
lefra wrote: post #534

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in Europe when someone dies somebody always has to go to jail Please cite the european law that states this.

There's no specific law, but a judge will always jail you for manslaughter.

No one went to jail when my grandparents died. Stop spreading lies.

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

#578

Post by InsideOutSanta »

invalidusernam3 wrote: post #483
itake wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can you share the link? This? https://www.eff.org/document/eff-border-search-pocket-guide ---- Seems the better strategy (for iOS) is come in with a plan to say yes to agents without pissing them off (like handing them an empty phone). better to local back up, encrypt, upload to your home server etc. Then login to a fresh iCloud account, selectively install apps, photos, and mail accounts. So it doesn't look like you…

This seems like an insane thing to have to do for visiting a supposed first world country. If phones had been around during USSR times I imagine you would have had to do the same. Personally I will rather just avoid any travel to the US, and I hope others do the same.

I used to love visiting the US. I have many friends there, and I really enjoy staying in places like Seattle and SF. But I haven't gone there since Trump 1.

That said, I think protecting your privacy is a good idea in general.

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

#579

Post by InsideOutSanta »

frgturpwd wrote: post #501
mcv wrote: post #493

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Security concerns you need to think about when visiting the US are absolutely no less than those when visiting China these days. Treat it like a totalitarian dictatorship with more technological means.

Honestly, I personally would be less nervous visiting China.

I haven't been to the US since Trump first got elected, but even before that, immigration agents often seemed oddly adversarial, whereas immigration agents in China just don't really seem to give a shit.

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

#580

Post by MrDisposable »

antihero wrote: post #556
MrDisposable wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 unpatr…

It would be cool if there's a third PIN that can wipe the unpatriotic profile whilst showing the patriotic one. So you use 1st pin for normal use, 2nd for downloading your flight details on patriot mode, and 3rd for unlocking to patriot mode whilst silently nuking unpatriotic data. Or a PIN that just nukes the data for certain apps (Signal, Telegram, WhatsApp, E-mail) etc. Feds can read my Slack messages all day.

Regarding Signal, Telegram, and WhatApp:

1. Never ever have Signal installed on the phone during border crossing. The presence of the app itself may trigger them (speaking from first-hand experience).

2. Having an empty Telegram account may look suspicious. My recommendation is to have two separate Telegram accounts, with the "unpatriotic" one in the separate profile only.

3. Never ever use WhatsApp for anything "unpatriotic". It's way of deleting messages leaves traces ("This message has been deleted") which may rise suspicions.

As for email, I just don't have any email clients installed on my "patriotic" profile. They all go to the "unpatriotic" one.

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