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Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border

nytimes.com

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

#291

Post by NewJazz »

hamdingers wrote: post #243
patcon wrote: post #213

I used to play around on projects adjacent to Tor and TailsOS, and had an idea for a setup I was researching. It's a little intense and probably has annoying failure modes, but sharing in case anyone else finds it helpful: - Tasker is an automation app for setting up rules for triggers and actions. It allows extension apps to be created to add new triggers and actions. - someone at one point made an extension to add…

Or keep it in a faraday bag and have the phone wipe if it sees it. If you're ever searched (or otherwise indisposed), they'll open the bag and wipe your phone for you.

This depends on the beacon being visible. If they just take the phone and walk away, because that's where they think the evidence is, it won't wipe.

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

#292

Post by dantillberg »

adamors wrote: post #263
leptons wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Those things are of the past now, for the US. It's a temporary situation, it isn't necessarily a permanent situation. Tell me how you think East Germany is doing these days. And no, it doesn't have to take 40 years to right the ship, so long as people get their heads out of their asses and vote. Things are likely to change by the end of this year, and in another 2 years we could have a very different government that…

Tens of millions have voted for this 3 times in the past 10 years, it succeeded twice. This is not going away, half the voting population of the US wants to live under authoritarian rule and will do anything to take the whole country with them.

Voter preferences can change with time, as voters observe the effects of their previous selections. Most voters don't want and didn't vote for authoritarian rule. They are humans with many diverse challenges & concerns in their lives. Their votes are an attempt to balance/compromise among those.

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

#293

Post by throwaway219450 »

victorbjorklund wrote: post #230
Zak wrote: post #189

For exactly the border search scenario, I wish smartphones could be imaged and restored as easily as PCs. Imagine booting the phone from a flash drive, making an encrypted image of the phone on said drive, and writing a fresh OS before reaching the border. There's no deception required to protect sensitive data or avoid the seizure of an expensive phone. Consent to unlocking the phone, refuse to unlock the drive. The…

Really? Does it take a long time to recover the phone? Haven’t really ever needed to recover a backup

Apple makes this very easy. I broke an iPhone and bought a replacement. If you have iCloud, you login to the new phone and you can see which backups you can recover from. If you are transferring a phone, say you upgraded, it’s even easier. You can also image the phone with a connected laptop and store it on a backup drive, which is nice to not use up iCloud limits.

The transfer and backup system are pretty much the same mechanisms.

Restoring is probably order of ~1 hour to go through all the setup. Then some hours to sync any data and updates that need to be redownloaded, apps reinstalled, etc.

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

#294

Post by zenoprax »

neom wrote: post #17

Legal Eagle just covered this, it's quite interesting analysis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2rokxux5cU

Great link. The most relevant part for me is the last couple minutes (22:00): it's only against the law to destroy evidence if it can be established that such evidence exists. This feels like a more elaborate version of accidentally losing a stack of papers to a gust of wind just as you hand them over.

1. Was there a lawful entitlement to the papers? 2. Were the papers protected private property? 3. Were the papers released to the wind intentionally? 4. If intentionally released was it expected that they would disappear or simply fall to the ground?

A couple easy technological analogies: 3. "Sorry, I gave you the wrong code by mistake." 4. "I thought it would go to a private guest mode, not delete everything!"

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

#295

Post by cherryteastain »

tamimio wrote: post #245
solid_fuel wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be fun to fantasize about these things some times, but there is no technical solution to tyranny. Laws are not like code, intent matters. Ultimately if the intent is that the government wants to see your private data, hiding it in any way will be charged - it doesn't matter if you jump through hoops to avoid this specific instance.

Yes, trying to solve a regulation or legal issue by some technical workaround will never work, you have to fight it at the same level, legally, or system-wise, otherwise, you will be like the person who tries to wash the stairs from the bottom all the way up, it rarely works, you gotta go up to down, collectively go against the matter rather than individually duct taping it for your own specific needs. In that exampl…

They would not be so vehemently against it if it did not work. There is a reason E2EE, duress passwords and similar technologies are under such intense assault these days.

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

#296

Post by leptons »

adamors wrote: post #263
leptons wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Those things are of the past now, for the US. It's a temporary situation, it isn't necessarily a permanent situation. Tell me how you think East Germany is doing these days. And no, it doesn't have to take 40 years to right the ship, so long as people get their heads out of their asses and vote. Things are likely to change by the end of this year, and in another 2 years we could have a very different government that…

Tens of millions have voted for this 3 times in the past 10 years, it succeeded twice. This is not going away, half the voting population of the US wants to live under authoritarian rule and will do anything to take the whole country with them.

>half the voting population of the US wants to live under authoritarian rule

That's half the people who showed up to vote, not "half the voting population". 1/3 of the eligible voters simply didn't vote, and from the people I've encountered that don't vote, they are mostly left-leaning.

No, stupidity and self-harm aren't going away, those are human traits. The current admin is actively hurting everyone, with tariffs and stupid wars he campaigned that he wouldn't start, ICE in every city everywhere causing chaos even to right-wing supporter-owned businesses (they wanted immigration reform but not like that!). This admin has shit the bed, and even his supporters are feeling that. They are now in the "finding out" phase, and the next phase doesn't look so good for republicans in the next election because of it.

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

#297

Post by shimman »

btbuildem wrote: post #227

The naivete of some of the comments here is astounding. It doesn't matter whether you're right, it doesn't matter whether it's the law, it's irrelevant that you have rights, etc. Those things are of the past now, for the US. I think it would be easier to understand the playing field and choose your actions accordingly, if you accept the US has entered its East Germany / late 20th century Soviet era -- except of cours…

You don't need to go to other countries to play your fears, lest we forget our constitution is a pro-slavery document and one of the first acts of congress was the fugitive slave laws.

I think it's more effective to stick to our own history because this country has always been a struggle for workers outside of a small very respite after WW2 that has been actively fought against and weakened since.

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

#298

Post by ericmay »

joenot443 wrote: post #282
btbuildem wrote: post #227

The naivete of some of the comments here is astounding. It doesn't matter whether you're right, it doesn't matter whether it's the law, it's irrelevant that you have rights, etc. Those things are of the past now, for the US. I think it would be easier to understand the playing field and choose your actions accordingly, if you accept the US has entered its East Germany / late 20th century Soviet era -- except of cours…

> if you accept the US has entered its East Germany / late 20th century Soviet era -- except of course with 1000x more invasive and effective surveillance tech. I'm pretty optimistic that after the next general America will be ready to give up on the extremity of late turn over a new leaf. I fully expect a new president to be ushered in, whether R or D, and for some level of normalcy to start creeping back. The Sovie…

Your day to day is still pretty much normal. If you turned off the news and never read about Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data [1] you'd just in your head remember there are tens of millions of folks flying, going through customs and border security and all that with 0 issues. What you wrote I think regarding the decade of silliness precisely supports the point, in my opinion.

[1] I'm not defending the behavior of border control here, but I also don't think we need to overreact to this one example which is exactly what is happening.

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

#299

Post by nphardon »

TheqO wrote: post #220
thomasjeff1 wrote: post #117

Why American authorities are always attacking their citizens freedom?

It's not just America. It's many countries. UK is same.

I know surveillance is on par in the UK, but is the UK also building and populating massive detention centers where people are kept without due process*? Are they flooding the streets of liberal cities with soldiers*? Killing citizens on the streets of liberal states (Minnesota) out in the open? Has nationalism completely overtaken the government and citizenship? Has the opposition party been completely neutered? Does your leader openly break any laws of their choosing while plundering national coffers?

*https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/la-family-120-days-...

*https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2026/08/20/...

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

#300

Post by djeastm »

grapheneos wrote: post #222
spacebanana7 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder whether it'd be better for a duress PIN to delete existing data and also create a semi plausible artificial profile to hide the deletion event.

> I wonder whether it'd be better for a duress PIN to delete existing data Reliably deleting data at the scale of the whole data partition, a secondary user or a Private Space is fully supported but requires a reboot or shutdown to truly complete it. After wiping key derivation material needed to obtain the key encryption keys in multiple ways and wiping the encrypted disk encryption keys, the OS can still access the…

Just wanted to say I appreciate your comprehensive comments in this thread. Learned a lot.
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