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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

#771

Post by daemin »

TheDong wrote: post #159
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…

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 parallel to this is parallel construction, where a side knows X but they know it through illegal/illegitimate means, so how do they create a trail of evidence for X through ordinary and legal means. This applies to legal cases and things like reverse engineering etc.

Like we know X but the colour of the fact is red, and we need some way to figure X out with a colour of green or blue.

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

#772

Post by rootusrootus »

AngryData wrote: post #219
tripleee wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really see a problem with this assuming the deception is used to uncover crimes.

So government officials can lie but citizens must tell the truth all the time? That is insane to me and I don't see how that does anything other than force people into perpetual criminality so that they could be arrested at any time. The average US citizen already commits 3 crimes a day because our justice system is so messed up.

> citizens must tell the truth all the time

That only applies to federal agents, at least. You can lie to local cops all you want. Though in both cases I think just keeping your trap shut is the better option.

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

#773

Post by rootusrootus »

nkrisc wrote: post #99
tripleee wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really see a problem with this assuming the deception is used to uncover crimes.

Will the problem is that we’ve seen it’s not only used to uncover crimes. There’s plenty of empirical evidence of cops lying to lock up innocent people. One truly absurd case was lying to convince a man he killed his father, and extracted a murder confession for a victim who they knew wasn’t dead. https://people.com/thomas-perez-jr-murder-interrogation-1186...

> There’s plenty of empirical evidence of cops lying to lock up innocent people.

And the solution is to correctly prosecute and punish them. A cop is sworn, and we should hold them to a higher standard not a lower one. But changing the underlying rules just because some cops are bad isn't necessarily an improvement.

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

#774

Post by hliyan »

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 worry that at some point, the physical device won't matter. Border authorities will know your email address, and could force you to log into your account on a device they supply. Five years ago, I would have called anyone even bringing up this possibility paranoid, but a lot of things that were completely unimaginable outside of Hollywood political thrillers have already happened.

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

#775

Post by inigyou »

bigDinosaur wrote: post #613
inigyou wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is first world on a technicality: the first world is defined as countries that were allied with the US during the cold war. If not for that, it'd be classified as developing. It's common to mix up developing/developed and third/first world because they were largely aligned during the cold war. But there is one first-world developing country.

The biggest economy in the world and the richest country to have ever existed is not a developing country, although it is quite unequal. What you've stated is political rhetoric that you want others to accept as fact.

Many developing countries have extreme inequality. What would it look like if the whole world's reserve currency accidentally ended up being the South African Rand?

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

#776

Post by inigyou »

tristor wrote: post #714
inigyou wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is first world on a technicality: the first world is defined as countries that were allied with the US during the cold war. If not for that, it'd be classified as developing. It's common to mix up developing/developed and third/first world because they were largely aligned during the cold war. But there is one first-world developing country.

The UK, per capita, is poorer than every single state in the US. https://finance.yahoo.com/economy/articles/gdp-alert-united-... As much as the current situation in the US upsets me, anyone who has spent considerable time within the US and outside of the US cannot believe what you've stated as anything other than a trite delusion. The US isn't just the richest country in the world, it has the second highest purchasin…

In a similar way to Ireland, measurements of the USA's wealth tend to be severely distorted by the financial shell games that countries play.

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

#777

Post by thewebguyd »

vintermann wrote: post #598
raxxorraxor wrote: post #590

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We probably need honey pod fake OS systems that boots up if not properly handled displaying some stars & stripes as background image and having the US national anthem playing for any sound the OS is trying to play.

This would unironically probably work pretty well. The bullies in airports don't have that much time to investigate a phone which "looks good".

Right, these goons are hand searching through phones specifically to find something, anything, they can use to make your life suck and detain you further.

A pin that boots into a dummy account, full of benign messages, photos, innocent web browsing, etc. is going to get you a pass. They'll flip through everything and get bored after a minute of not finding anything.

Far less likely to aggravate them than wiping your phone

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

#778

Post by outworlder »

Hendrikto wrote: post #583
eru wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you staying in this place? (Is this in South Africa?)

Brazil maybe?

Even for Brazil, even for the most dangerous cities, that's still an insane number of kidnappings. They happen enough that you need to be aware and be careful to not be an easy target, but it's still a rare event overall.

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

#780

Post by thecrash »

kdheiwns wrote: post #286
thecrash wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are incorrect, US border patrol can not arrest you for refusing to decrypt your phone (if you are a citizen). It is not considered obstructing a search to refuse to provide a password. This is not "autistic" speculation about legal technicalities, there are many many examples which support this. The worst they can do is seize the device.

You're free to test them. See what they do when you say "it's not deleted. It's just inaccessible until I cooperate." Because it's identical in their eyes. People who confidently say "the government can't do that" rarely have a good day. They end up sharing a cell with the person in the article this discussion is about. And we're living in an era where immigration enforcement can shoot Americans without penalty. It j…

I have tested them, that's what I'm saying! The belief that the authorities are completely unrestrained in their power serves authoritarianism. Creating this belief is in fact a major priority for the current regime.

This is not to say that things aren't bad, or abuses never happen. But if people fail to exercise the actual power and rights they do have, under a mistaken belief that they have no power and no rights, then that will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

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