US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search

Post by lentil_soup » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 10:28 PM UTC

ryan_j_naughton wrote: post #683

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…

What city was this, if you don't mind me asking?

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 10:37 PM UTC

microtonal wrote: post #328

qurren wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it have been wiser if that person had, as a US citizen, just refused to provide a PIN? At the most they'd just confiscate the phone, and it'd be encrypted anyway. No actual destruction of anything. On another note, maybe GrapheneOS should add some kind of feature where the phone involuntarily destructs if a correct PIN isn't entered for 48 hours (or whatever the user sets at installation time, and changing the…

Would it have been wiser if that person had, as a US citizen, just refused to provide a PIN? Purely technically it would also depend on the state of the phone. Phones can be read out/exploited more easily after first unlock (AFU) than before first unlock (BFU). So, a middle path would be putting the phone in BFU. Much harder to use exploits against the phone and biometric authentication doesn't work. One way of fairl…

Post by Cider9986 » Tue, Jul 28, 2026, 10:41 PM UTC

qurren wrote: post #261

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…

Would it have been wiser if that person had, as a US citizen, just refused to provide a PIN? At the most they'd just confiscate the phone, and it'd be encrypted anyway. No actual destruction of anything. On another note, maybe GrapheneOS should add some kind of feature where the phone involuntarily destructs if a correct PIN isn't entered for 48 hours (or whatever the user sets at installation time, and changing the…

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jul 29, 2026, 12:03 AM UTC

TeMPOraL wrote: post #749

deltoidmaximus wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And there's the problem that if the PIN or worse a biometric version of this becomes remotely well known you've now created an incentive for a car thief to kidnap people even if they only want the car.

Or anything else you can't easily transfer. I can't help but point at passkeys in particular (or 2FA in general). A variant of this is the well-known scene from a previous century's movie involving extracting an eye to bypass retinal scanner.

Post by Markoff » Wed, Jul 29, 2026, 7:12 AM UTC

Cider9986 wrote: post #960

Markoff wrote: post #628

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, as someone who lived in China for years (as foreigner) and visited also last year after many years I WOULD BE SURPRISED if this happened when travelling to China, since China is clearly more free than US/Israel. China wants tourists and don't care about your stupid social media.

True, they focus their oppression on their own citizens and minorities for the most part.