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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

#331

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

fedpost wrote: post #137
gruez wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Amendment 4: He was charged for destroying evidence, not refusing a search >Amendment 5: Destroying evidence isn't testimony. Moreover he would have been in the clear if he just kept his mouth shut.

Problem is, he didn't destroy shit. "He" (by which I mean, technically the agents) deleted a header that's used to encrypt data but can restored from a backup.

This is why we have judges, I wonder if this has been ruled on already. If you filled out a notebook in a special cipher with the cipher stored separately beside it, then when a cop asked for the notebook you handed the cipher over and then burned the cipher right in front of them, is that destruction of evidence? Idk at the end of the day it does have the same result as destroying the data.

>"He" (by which I mean, technically the agents)

Under the same logic you could mail a bomb to anyone and say you didn't kill anyone, they did. It was just rigged to blow when they opened the box.

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

#332

Post by bellowsgulch »

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…

I agree. It's actually quite insulting to other countries whose actual atrocities were measured in lives lost. I voted for Kamala but Trump Derangement Syndrome is real. He's just a loser, he's not even remotely brave enough to be Hitler Jr.

The guy doesn't have the stomach for real totalitarianism. Just populism, corruption, and weakening the country.

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

#333

Post by grapheneos »

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…

GrapheneOS has built-in encrypted backup and restore. It backs up the same data transferred by Google's device transfer feature for moving to a new phone which is nearly all app data, the data in the home directory, contacts and a bit more. Certain apps such as Signal encrypt their own data with another layer of encryption using a hardware keystore key. Signal's own backup system needs to be used for that, although it can just be used as a way to get data into the system backup.

It's worth noting wiping a device shortly before an anticipated search could also be considered destruction of evidence in the same way. It doesn't have to be done after a request for the data to be considered that.

> 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 drive gets seized and you go on your way (if you're a US citizen entering the USA).

This was likely the best move for him to take. They could have held him for a while and wasted his time but eventually would have had to give him access to a lawyer and let him go. Unless they had a recording of him entering a PIN/password, they were nearly certainly not going to get his data from it. He very likely didn't gain anything from wiping it.

He did help every GrapheneOS user by spreading awareness of the duress PIN/password. It was designed around an adversary aware of it and therefore not wanting to attempt using a PIN/password obtained via coercion. In the future, we want to integrate the feature into the secure element rate limiting for key derivation so it can't be avoided by exploiting the OS.

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

#334

Post by vjvjvjvjghv »

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.

You can rage against Trump and republicans as much as you want but in the end the democrats must learn to formulate why anybody should vote FOR them. Even in the current chaos they aren’t able to bring up a coherent message and follow through when they are in power. I see the same in Germany. AfD is getting stronger while the established parties get nothing done.

It reminds me somewhat of the state of the Weimar Republic. The democratic parties failed which gave an opening to the nazis.

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

#335

Post by GeekyBear »

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…

> For exactly the border search scenario, I wish smartphones could be imaged and restored as easily as PCs.

You're always been able to backup and restore your iPhone to your local Windows PC or a Mac using free first party software from Apple.

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

#336

Post by wat10000 »

leptons wrote: post #246
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…

>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…

On a long enough timeline, nothing is permanent. The question is how long it lasts and how bad it gets before it gets better.

In terms of the ending, East Germany was nearly an ideal case. The state just sort of gently fell over. The country got absorbed into a friendly neighbor. There wasn't much loss of life, no widespread destruction.

Then there's East Germany's predecessor state, which ended because it decided to wage war on half the world, and its people bore the consequences. Millions dead, cities wrecked, occupation by foreign armies, the country carved up. "This too shall pass" isn't always a good thing.

Or look at the state that created and sustained East Germany. Borne out of violent revolution, decades of repression, collapse, turmoil, economic hardship, brief flirtation with democracy, de facto dictatorship, no end in sight.

My biggest worry with the US right now isn't the government itself. It's that so many people want this government. Voting doesn't help when the voters want the bad stuff. We could have a very different government in another two years if the people want it. I'm not convinced they do. If they do I'm not convinced that sentiment will last. We already went through this once, and the "actually, let's not give the shitheads power" sentiment fell apart by the next election.

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

#337

Post by hallway_monitor »

convolvatron wrote: post #325
teiferer wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tyranny does not care about "proof". It doesn't even care about plausible deniability. Best you can get away with is lack of suspicion. Have a secondary phone with some standard apps on that you use now and then so theyhave a history and just look like you are just not a technical person and read novels on dead trees instead. A lot of work but likely works.

are we seriously approaching a point where its quasi-illegal to not participate in the socials?

More like they've looked you up and the apps being missing would be a giveaway about the dummy phone

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

#338

Post by trencedamp »

Terr_ wrote: post #323
trencedamp wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a way simpler solution and it's just to leave your phone at home and put your SIM in a different handset without all your data on it

An increasing portion of phones are eSIM [0] only these days, and the difficulty of swapping can be weirdly-bad depending on provider. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESIM

But non esims exist still, and if you're that worried about security, you can get one.

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

#339

Post by TheqO »

nphardon wrote: post #299
TheqO wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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? Doe…

Not yet, but Elon Musk is doing his best to get similar types elected in UK.

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

#340

Post by SlightlyLeftPad »

panarky wrote: post #310
joenot443 wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> some level of normalcy You are undoubtedly correct that at some point there will be new leadership in the US. Politics makes leadership change a possibility. Biology makes it an inevitability. But I don't think the evidence is very strong that switching from one man to a different man, even if the new man wears a blue hat instead of a red hat, will make that much difference against capital and its surveillance stat…

Yeah, mostly agree but playing devils advocate, PRISM was authorized under bush, implemented under Obama, and is being abused by Trump. Obama promised safeguards, but it’s pretty clear those were just a ruse. It’s only going to get worse. The well deserved controversy around Flock is the perfect example.
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