Live data from Hacker News

US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search

techspot.com

751–760 of 1001 posts

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

#751

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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?

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

Late 1960s at the very earliest, and it's only been a tiny minority.

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

#752

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…

> 1. Don't travel with anything you can't afford to lose on device. This means setting up travel-specific password managers and hardware keys for a subset of your accounts that you absolutely need to access while abroad, and being prepared to reset those passwords and disable those hardware keys very quickly once home. > 2. Review past legal cases against travelers and identify what behaviors the government considers…

You've left out the important qualifier I put at the outset of those three points:

> If your threat model includes US state actors

It was not advice for everyone, nor even most people. I have plenty of friends abroad, and a few of them have even traveled to my country for the World Cup and had a grand time.

I roll my eyes at this kind of overreaction, the same way I imagine Europeans rolling their eyes to hear Americans worried about migrant crime news stories not wanting to travel to Europe. Or maybe they used to roll their eyes at that... I'm less sure now.

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

#753
post #691

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That answer would mean that you’re are on drugs. And your being on drugs means that the cop can request your id.

America is a free country. Everyone can ask you for everything. I can ask you for money. A cop can ask you for an id. No need to rush and provide what you were asked for. But that 18 wheeler thing is extremely counterproductive.

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

#754

There are laws against the destruction of evidence, but I'd argue that there's no evidence in this case since they don't have clear-cut knowledge what's on the phone. It's potential evidence at best and it's therefore not clear if the law applies. If Customs already knew whether the suspect had incriminating files on his/her phone things might be different.

> if customs knew...

Even then, they'd have to produce such in court. ?

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

#755

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…

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.

An interesting analogue to "What color are your bits" in the tech world, as well as a direct disproof of your "two identical numbers are the same bits" statement (although perhaps only technically so), is the idea of provenance of bits memory in programming languages. Here is an RFC for rust's memory provenance:

https://rust-lang.github.io/rfcs/3559-rust-has-provenance.ht...

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

#756

If your threat model means you can’t afford for border security to view your device, wipe the damn thing yourself before crossing the border and restore it from an encrypted online backup on the other side. You’re just carrying a blank phone that you intend to set up and use later, and they can’t force you to install your backup onto a phone. Now, this is sus as hell, and you’ll probably draw all kinds of extra atten…

> You’re just carrying a blank phone that you intend to set up and use later, and they can’t force you to install your backup onto a phone.

They can just make this illegal too, and ask for the keys to your backup, or detain you until you do. Point is, you can't gain freedom through technology. It was always a political thing.

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

#757

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…

Yeah, but without a jury O.J. Simpson never would've walked out of court a free man. For example in Europe when someone dies somebody always has to go to jail, even if they were defending themselves or responding to a potential threat. A jury could show compassion or empathy. Judges are extremely stoic in that regard.

This reference from Germany indicates that self-defense is lawful even if it ends the attacker's life, as long as the violence is not excessive for the situation.

https://se-legal.de/services/criminal-defense-lawyer/self-de...

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

#758

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope to meet one some day.

Unlikely, because of your priors; you already think we are odious so it isn't like you are looking for the best in (or of) us, and second why would they want to meet you if you assume the worst of them? I don't support this Administration's behavior, but I'd rather meet an American who did and have a discussion with them about it than try to convince some dude who already decided I was an asshole, based on the countr…

[flagged]

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

#759

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope to meet one some day.

Unlikely, because of your priors; you already think we are odious so it isn't like you are looking for the best in (or of) us, and second why would they want to meet you if you assume the worst of them? I don't support this Administration's behavior, but I'd rather meet an American who did and have a discussion with them about it than try to convince some dude who already decided I was an asshole, based on the countr…

> you already think we are odious

I had to look up the word to double-check as a non-native English speaker. A quick definition I'm working with is "Arousing or meriting strong dislike, aversion, or intense displeasure." The synonyms assumed are: evil, cruel, hostile, nasty, wicked (all from Grammarly).

The experience of "you" - Americans - for non-Americans is shaped by cultural exports, personal contacts, and interactions with available American institutions. The last of these is likely to start with the immigration policy and its execution in the form of an embassy visit to apply for a visa and later with the officers at the airport. How confident are you that these interactions cannot be described as "odious" in a significant percentage (maybe even the majority) of cases? I've never experienced it myself, but in my social circle, almost all who tried were pretty bitter about it, even when successful. There were some outright Kafkaesque situations as well. Does it come as a surprise that a completely ruined "first impression" ended up biasing them to some extent?

I think that's rather expected. I'm pretty sure the same is true for a portion of people who want to visit or immigrate to my country. I can hope it's maybe less prevalent - we're not as sure of our greatness here (still better than those others around, obviously! /s) - but I wouldn't count on it to be an entirely positive experience, either. Admitting this and trying to fix it (including, unfortunately, convincing that dude who had to deal with his fair share of assholes to get here that not everybody is an asshole) would probably be a better course of action than isolationism you seem to favor, but to each their own.

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

#760

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But again where is the crime? Destruction or removal of property to prevent seizure. CBP are empowered to search US citizens devices and, if the citizen refuses to comply, to seize that device. They'll be alleging that by knowingly providing CBP with a duress PIN he destroyed his own property to prevent its seizure. Notably, they don't need to prove he destroyed evidence of anything.

Property was not destroyed or removed and can still be seized. Slam dunk for the defendant

Digital property is property.
Post reply on HN