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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

#691

Post by ivl »

dgoldstein0 wrote: post #467
Telaneo wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but then says he can't have me disrespecting and being a smart-ass to his cops Maybe it's just me, but I am of the exact opposite opinion. Cops have enormous power, and any misuse of it should be pushed back on hard. Cops that misuse their power should not be respected. An informed citizenry is a wonderful asset in making that power imbalance less of a problem.

There's a difference between polite pushback and being straight up disrespectful. It shouldn't matter as the cops shouldn't abuse their power and shouldn't attack people, but we live in the real world. The judge probably didn't want to have to deal with the potential future mess if op didn't learn their lesson and got beat up by a cop.

If a cop demands your ID when you have no obligation to give it, your answer should be something to the effect of "I hope you get hit by the next passing 18-wheeler".

Malignant authority needs to be treated with maximal hostility. The 'lesson' you want here is completely backwards.

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

#692

Post by yeahforsureman »

ryan_j_naughton wrote: post #685
mapt wrote: post #657

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As one does. Why, six of the eleven times I've had my car stolen, it was a carjacking with myself or my family member in it.

Six of the eleven times... Crazy. What city was this, if you don't mind me asking?

Jesus, what country?

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

#693

Post by UltraSane »

mapt wrote: post #657
lentil_soup wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you may have to think both about protecting your data by technical means, and about not angering the agents more than you plan to That's the same problem with technical solutions to crime. I come from a very dangerous city and I used to have a car that needed a PIN to work. You could turn then engine on and drive but after a minute if you didn't input the PIN it would turn off without warning and start blasting the…

As one does. Why, six of the eleven times I've had my car stolen, it was a carjacking with myself or my family member in it.

That is insane. Where do you live?

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

#694

Post by adrianwaj »

weberer wrote: post #672
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…

>Remember what happened to Aaron Swartz He killed himself before the trial even began. I think he would have won the case if he actually went through it.

Maybe that's why "they" killed him?

Josh Greenberg from Grooveshark died of unknown cause in 2015 after taking a settlement rather than going to trial. He wiped all the music (did he really need to do that?) and then gave up all the software. The service may well have been seen as a massive cost center during its life and the death was a message or warning. I don't know. Business is war, isn't it? - quite literally.

One person's savior can become another person's scapegoat or witch. Even all three.

Personally, I would be suspicious of any death around a high profile trial - at least as a possibility. Greenberg introduced a 'tipjar' eventually to compensate artists but I think he would've been better off making a swapping service where users can trade their own CD-ripped or purchased files for another person's. Just like swapping physical CDs or LPs. So 1-to-1 personal distribution rather than Grooveshark's 1-to-many public distribution without the required licenses. An escrow service for file-swapping.

Sort of unrelated, though.

To me, litigation may be an incredibly dangerous route to justice. "Winning at all costs" may mean stopping a case going to trial in the first place. Judges can also end up the biggest losers too. Justice always gets served - but whose justice?

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

#695

Post by wilburx3 »

daishi55 wrote: post #94

> federal agents had already circulated his name and photo internally, saying he was under investigation for "suspected terrorism activities" because of his alleged association with the movement against Cop City Of course it’s about that huh. It’s quite scary how far the US will go against anyone who engages in this sort of activism.

This is the most troubling part of the whole episode. Targeted by the government. Its been a long rough slope to get here but they are at the goal line.

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

#696

Post by weberer »

nkrisc wrote: post #96
reenorap wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have the duress PIN on sticker on your phone. Maybe put it backwards and don’t say anything to border patrol. Have them try it out and erase the phone and then you can legitimately say you didn’t do anything and they did it themselves.

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?

>what other possible explanation is there for someone putting a PIN visible on their phone that wipes it while crossing a border?

For thieves, obviously.

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

#697

Post by arcbyte »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #442
Aurornis wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> Federal prosecutors won't even pursue cases unless they think there's a high chance of success. The problem with this theory is that it ignores the incentives on the other side in a criminal case. When you get charged with something, the prosecutor offers you a deal and that deal is almost invariably a significantly lower penalty than what happens if you go to court and get convicted. The plea deal is a lesser char…

What youre saying is true, but the reality is that the number of people actually affected by it is vanishingly small. Of course its not vanishing if youre that person affected, but as far as the system goes, its negligible.

The reality is that most people who become subject to criminal prosecution are guilty. The reason can often be attributed to overbroad laws, but that still means you are guilty and will likely lose your criminal case. The prevalence of plea deals is just a performance optimization on top of that fact - most people are guilty at that stage and we'll let you off a little easier if you avoid the time and cost of a trial.

Innocent people are coerced to plead guilty, but you also have to realize the number of "innocent people pleading guilty" also contains guilty people who convinced lay people, who never saw or reviewed the evidence, they were innocent. As a prosecutor during a plea negotiation I once almost dismissed a charge against a girl who convinced me that she was innocent until I actually looked a security tape before signing the dismissal. She was 100% guilty. This is another interesting point about how busy prosecutors are - i didnt even bother to review the evidence against her before offering her a plea deal.

All this to say, if you end up coerced into accepting a plea deal despite your innocence, you are not a normal person. Yes, there's at least one normal person out there who was coerced, but they're the exception that proves the rule.

Courts need more funding, laws need to be relaxed and fine tuned, we need to stop the school to prison pipeline, but even with all those problems the system works pretty damn well.

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

#698

Post by leni536 »

majke wrote: post #519
jpfromlondon wrote: post #516

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't carry a smartphone, is this likely to be a red flag if I'm stopped?

Many countries now assume you have a phone. For example getting UK visa requires a smartphone. I don't think going without a phone is feasible nowadays. Another question is if going with a burner phone that has just sim card and bank card, sufficient. But then you need appleid/google account on the device, and this again links back to your phone number, and it's not easy in practice to have proper clean device.

> UK visa requires a smartphone

I don't think this is accurate.

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

#699

Post by voakbasda »

piltdownman wrote: post #690
mattlondon wrote: post #681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in these situations your absolute best bet is fawning compliance. Ask precisely how high they want you to jump. Perhaps your friendly smiling Yes-Sir-No-Sir-3-bags-Full-Sir act might just be enough to let you get on your way without anything else happening apart from a stamp in your passport. Even the slightest hint of defiance or surliness from you to a border guard/policeman/etc - potentially at the end of…

"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - for ever"

I will ask this here again:

At what point did the German people find it morally acceptable to start killing Nazis?

At what point will the US stop accepting the boot and act to remove the tyranny stamping on our collective face?

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