Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border • Hacker News Board

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

#471

Post by stonogo » Fri, Aug 21, 2026, 10:51 PM UTC

rglover wrote: post #458

thomasjeff1 wrote: post #117

Why American authorities are always attacking their citizens freedom?

Technology is becoming too significant an existential threat to all governments. IMO, this is the "animal lashing out when backed into a corner" stage of their arc. All of the bills are coming due and they're having to answer for them. Stuff like this incident (plus the whole surveillance gambit) just being a reflex out of fear, desperate to stay in power just a little bit longer. The funny part is, in the lashing ou…

> Technology is becoming too significant an existential threat to all governments. IMO, this is the "animal lashing out when backed into a corner" stage of their arc. All of the bills are coming due and they're having to answer for them.

Forgive my ignorance, but how is any of this true? Frontier LLM labs are practically begging governments to tell them how to act, the most profitable class of technology company is surveillance-focused (like Flock and Palantir) precisely because the government money is ubiquitous and unquestioning, and everyone else is "donating" money as fast as they can and getting blanket legal indemnification in return.

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

#472

Post by grishka » Fri, Aug 21, 2026, 10:51 PM UTC

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…

Those "nandroid" backups weren't "close" to that, they were literally that initially. Then, when Android phones started coming with the /sdcard partition mapped to the internal flash memory (a subdirectory of /data) instead of an actual SD card, the /data partition backup mechanism was changed to copy individual files into some sort of archive, but the end result remained the same.

You can still do it on modern Android devices, as long as the bootloader is unlocked. Yes, the file system is encrypted, but a modern custom recovery is able decrypt and mount it.

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

#473

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Aug 21, 2026, 10:52 PM UTC

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…

[deleted]

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

#474

Post by grishka » Fri, Aug 21, 2026, 10:53 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #400

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…

> 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. Backing up and restoring an iPhone is extremely easy. You don't need to imagine all of this flash drive or encrypted imaging stuff. You plug it into your computer and do a backup. You can then wipe the…

Except apps themselves don't get backed up, only their data. So if you had any apps that are no longer in the app store or that came from outside of it (e.g. TestFlight or development builds), those won't be restored.

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

#475

Post by wetpaws » Fri, Aug 21, 2026, 10:55 PM UTC

deepfriedbits wrote: post #268

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…

With all due respect, this is a wild take. Things aren't great in the U.S. right now, but they're not even in the same universe as what the Stasi was doing. > 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 course with 1000x more invasive and effective surveillance tech.

[dead]

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

#476

Post by AbsurdCensor » Fri, Aug 21, 2026, 10:55 PM UTC

kccqzy wrote: post #441

trollbridge wrote: post #163

U.S. citizens are going to need obtain a burner phone before returning, and load it with the absolute minimum to load boarding passes, etc., perhaps some reading material or a movie to watch on the plane, and be prepared to share full credentials for thing at the border. (I used to do some travel patterns where taking a certain client laptop wasn’t an option. It was an absolute gigantic pain for the type of work I di…

I’ve been asked to hand over my phone when I entered India as a visitor with a valid visa. Yes it was a burner phone. Yes the officer questioned me after seeing only 7 photos in the entire Photos app. It was very obvious that it was a burner phone. I didn’t deceive the officer, instead I just nicely explained why this was a burner phone.

Yep, travelling outside your country of origin, expect that your phone/laptop/ect is subject to search. Anything on you is, it's literally stated. Want to push against that? Sure, makes sense, but just carry a burner phone/device and not worry about it. Literally what the US government recommends when traveling to places like China.

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

#477

Post by AbsurdCensor » Fri, Aug 21, 2026, 10:56 PM UTC

stickfigure wrote: post #232

TheqO wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't give a pin, they can seize your devices (Andrew Tate on his 1st visit to Florida said that he refused to give pin and they seized phone and laptop)

They can't keep them, you'll get the devices back. Use a temp phone in the mean time. Sad that we have to accept this as a risk of international travel, but here we are.

It's not sad, it's always been the case, and just expanding areas that are implementing it. It seems a lot of people here haven't travelled, or especially haven't travelled to 'restrictive' places in the past.

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

#478

Post by rangerelf » Fri, Aug 21, 2026, 10:57 PM UTC

deepfriedbits wrote: post #268

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…

With all due respect, this is a wild take. Things aren't great in the U.S. right now, but they're not even in the same universe as what the Stasi was doing. > 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 course with 1000x more invasive and effective surveillance tech.

You'd be surprised.

I also do find americans to be utterly naive regarding this slide towards fascism, and I live here so don't bother trying to explain it to me.

You only saw the end result regarding the "universe as what the Stasi was doing", obviously you didn't pay attention to the road getting there.

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

#479

Post by samizdis » Fri, Aug 21, 2026, 10:57 PM UTC

thomasjeff1 wrote: post #124

maxglute wrote: post #101

What about none citizens? Customs kicks you out or throws you into a camp first. E: but seriously, what happens to non citizens. What happens if you bring a burner/wiped phone? I assume digit forensics can confirm it was pre wiped but what's topping them from alleged you wiped on US soil.

So non-citizens should avoid visiting US. Got it

That has been the case for a long while. I used to travel a lot for work - Serbia, Czech Republic, Germany, Portugal, Australia, NZ, Qatar, Kuwait, Moldova - but the only unpleasantness I received at a border/intl airport was on landing in the US, twice; NY both times. Talk about rude and aggressive, for no reason at all. I'm from the UK, by the way.

My fondest border experience was many years ago when entering France; this was before the UK had joined the EU. (Our later exit was dumb, IMO.)

Anyhow, a youngish officer - probably mid-20s or so - examined my passport while asking questions, in perfect English. His voice was even and his demeanour calm and professional. Then he took a step back, closed my passport and put it in his pocket. A few seconds later, he started laughing and said: "The look on your face. Priceless. Welcome to Paris."

He really had me and I saluted him for that.

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

#480

Post by makeitdouble » Fri, Aug 21, 2026, 10:58 PM UTC

zmmmmm wrote: post #431

If you initiate a wipe before approaching immigration, which swaps the whole phone contents to an encrypted backup that you physically can't decrypt without a key that (say) a friend knows. Then you would be offering immigration the device in an unaltered state between when they request it and when they receive it. Any request for an alternative pass code or whether the pass code given will alter the state of the dev…

This case has a very specific legal framing to it, but border agents don't actually need anything more than suspicion to keep you locked for a day or two.

Then it could last a lot longer. Technically they don't have the right to do that, but you won't have any physical mean to enforce your rights, and suing afterwards won't lead you anywhere in the current climate.

We'e had a few of these stories in HN before.