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Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border

nytimes.com

141–150 of 1001 posts

Re: Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article says he was charged with obstruction. You can try this "gift link" to the article: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/21/us/politics/samuel-tunick...

He is charged with obstruction, but under domestic terrorism (as defined by a national security presidential memorandum).

But republicans assured me that they wouldn't ever start throwing around domestic terrorism at democrats!

Re: Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border

#146
post #97

I'm not a legal expert, but all this seems to check out with US law. Americans need to remember that some of their constitutional rights don't really apply at ports of entry by design. This inconvenient truth for the land of the free has existed for a long time, this situation is just drawing attention to it. Their powers are far-reaching.

Fun fact, there is a long standing exemption to the unreasonable search and seizure protection laws if you're out on a boat (it may only be on the open ocean and Great Lakes, though IANAL). One of the earliest Supreme Court rulings essentially said that without it, it would be impossible for the US to enforce tariffs, which were the main source of revenue at the time. Anybody who boats often enough has been boarded by the coast guard for various safety checks that allows them to poke around and there's little you can do about it.

Re: Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border

#147
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, they may well give you bad time if your phone looks like a burner with too little content.

If you are a citizen it doesn’t matter. They have to let you in.

According to this admin due process is only for citizens, and since we’ve claimed you aren’t a citizen you have no due process to prove otherwise.

Re: Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border

#148
post #2

According to the article, he was actually using GrapheneOS and gave the border official the Duress PIN. So I guess technically it was the official that erased the data :-)

Interesting. So is this GrapheneOS indeed operationally good for keeping one‘s data private?

Re: Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border

#149
post #29
post #12

Yet another case that will waste the court's time and money. All this is doing is keeping defense lawyers pocket's lined. At this point, people should buy a burner phone when going to/from the US. In that phone only have a couple of phone numbers and that's it.

Think it’s better to travel without a phone at all and buy one when arriving in the us? Problematic I guess with everything being digital

The last time I tried to do that on a trip to Germany, admittedly many years ago, I found I could not get phone service without a local address.
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