Note: The HN headline says "US citizen charged" but the article's headline and content do not mention his status at all.
US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search
871–880 of 1001 posts
Re: US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search
#872Earlier 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…
This comment irritates me. On one hand, I agree with it. On the other: how is it not just a version of “if you have nothing to hide”? At some point, you should fight for what you consider basic human rights. Where you draw the line and how you fight is up to you. It sounds like your attitude is to comply with whatever the authorities want. It seems like a completely innocent person is the best one to push back on aut…
There is a time and a place.
If someone jumps out at you in a dark alley and they have a weapon and they ask for your wallet, what are you going to do? Swallow your pride and give it to them, or willingly enter into a high-risk and highly-imbalanced scenario where you are at a huge disadvantage against the other person for who this is essentially zero-risk, something they do multiple times a day, and they have nothing to lose from it either way.
Sure it is legally wrong and you can stand up for your legal rights in that situation, but it's a high-risk strategy to take.
Is that particular moment, that exact moment in time, the right time to take a stand for the rule of law? Or perhaps there are other things you can do after the fact?
Up to you.
Someone stabbing you and leaving your corpse in an alley is obviously pretty bad, but getting on a no-fly list for life/prison time/beaten senseless in a backroom in some random airport in a country where you are a foreigner and don't know the language or law/etc because you wanted to prove some point to a border guard at some airport somewhere and were generally being a jerk is no joke either.
Re: US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search
#873I 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…
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…
Here's the full version https://www.eff.org/wp/digital-privacy-us-border-2017
One of the names in the byline matches his HN username so it's likely this.
Re: US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search
#874Earlier quoted context omitted.
What about simply not using a smartphone and accessing your data via internet when you're in the country? You could use Mega (secure file storage) to access your files, for example. I wonder if border agents could coerce you into giving access to your internet file storage, though.
Remember that the creator of Mega is getting extradited to the USA - again - a country where he's never been, by the way - for basically this crime (using encryption).
Not true. He previously ran a site called MegaUpload which hosted copyright infringing files. This is why he created Mega, which is an end-to-end encrypted cloud storage service similar to OneDrive of Google Drive.
Even if Mega users host illegal or copyright infringing contents he can't be convicted for it. In fact, he won't even know about it.
I'm just amazed that not everyone is using it. People don't seem to know about it and they're not advertising it. They probably made a deal with LEA or politicians not to spread the word in exchange for not being extradited.
Re: US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search
#875By raising the profile of airport seizures all it means is that serious criminals will wipe their devices prior to travelling and restore afterwards/buy a new device for travel. The powers of investigators special rights and abilities rely on them being used very rarely. Last thing the terrorism investigators want is media coverage exposing their tactics.
They are trying to make buying a burner phone illegal as well. Pushing a rule to require an ID to buy any SIM.
Re: US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search
#876Earlier quoted context omitted.
Suspicious, maybe; but not criminal (like lying to a federal officer in the course of an investigation, or willfully destroying what they’re lawfully trying to search). Probably even more suspicious if you make sketchy excuses when the truth is fine. I’d go with “I (or %COMPANY%) figure electronic devices get imaged at borders or potentially stolen abroad, so we don’t carry them when we travel.” Blame the other count…
Unfortunately I agree with James Mickens. If CBP asks me to turn on and unlock my phone, I do it. It is the same advice that cops give to young black men in “the talk”. Comply, don’t get killed, hire a lawyer and fight injustice in court.
I generally agree, I have no interest into getting into pissing matches with random CBP officers. But it's not the same situation.
You have the right to refuse to unlock your phone as far as I know. You do not have the right to refuse lawful orders. So you cant resist being arrested or being searched, or them taking your stuff but you can refuse to answer questions, you don't have to tell them anything, whether that is the best plan of course varies.
But in general you don't know what they know, where their questions are leading, what minor detail in your answers may corroborate your "guilt" or minor inconsistencies may be construed as lying and obstructing.
So you are in general better off not answering police questions.
That of course excludes questions you are legally obligated to answer. Which in the specific case of CBP interactions is most questions.
You should also always keep in mind what the consequences of your actions are don't commit a felony to avoid a misdemeanour, in the case in the article if this guy had child sexual abuse material on his phone, or chats conspiring to commit major felonies his call was probably the right one. If his phone was clean and he was being adversarial, he chose poorly.
You have to try to strike a balance between being respectful, generally agreeable and cooperative while exercising your rights.
Re: US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search
#877I’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…
Yes, I had the duress codes but entered them by mistake. I wanted to enter the real one but
If you can convince a jury with that story then it might work. Personally I wouldn't buy it. Would you?
Re: US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search
#878Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just don't travel to the US.
This is an increasingly popular solution. Foreign tourism has crashed. I love the geography of the US, and it has some truly stunning places to visit. But they're not so stunning that I need to risk my freedom - risk my freedom - to visit them in person.
I do not sell tourism services. I sell software. If there is less foreign tourism in the US, nice places will be less crowded. So, what are my incentives to ask my government to ease foreign entry to my country?
Re: US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search
#879> When he finally provided a passcode, the phone appeared to restart. The defense motion states that "the screen went blank, flashed several times, and the phone appeared to restart," resulting in the loss of data.
Tsk, amateur hour. I thought it's been decades since disk encryption software had two-password functionality that provided plausible deniability by booting into an alternative, clean OS. Impossible to prove intent to deceive.
How disappointing to see such a naive phone wipe functionality, it's so obvious even non-technical people could probably tell what happened. Smh. It can't be that hard to design something at least a little better.
Re: US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search
#880I 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…
> 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…
Yeah, it would have been way better not to have an alarm, and instead make it appear like the car broke down. Could even maybe somehow actually break it programmatically.