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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

#541
post #538

The decoy passcode feature should boot into a separate partition that looks like a normal phone setup, and during that time quietly erase the user's actual data. They would never have known if it worked like this.

Probably, but it will be more valuable for society for him to be tried and found not guilty, setting a legal precedent.

… that dude probably would have preferred not having that in their life

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

#542
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…

How is this legally different from just not unlocking your phone? Which in this scenario seems like it'd be fine.

The worst case of refusing to unlock your phone is that they keep your phone for some days/weeks/months while they investigate.

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

#543
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…

It'd be less of a hassle to buy a burner phone to travel with. It's not a felony to not bring your main phone when leaving the country.

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

#544
post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its only with the benefit of hindsight (and being on the winning side- thus the propaganda was never dispelled) that we consider the stasi and so on the way we do. If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck.. might just be a duck. I don’t believe those living “normal lives” in East Germany or the Soviet era considered the police to be evil and invasive the way we do today.

> I don’t believe those living “normal lives” in East Germany or the Soviet era considered the police to be evil and invasive the way we do today. That's wrong. I am sure you do not speak German, because otherwise you'd have a lot more information available. If you do speak German, listen to Dieter Hallervorden. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJh9ejnpvFc He explained why he escaped from the DDR. And they AL…

Is that any different to how African Americans feel about the police? Or how Latinos feel about ICE today?

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

#546
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 :-)

He is charged with obstruction. Not "erasing data". Was he intentionally trying to hinder a search that was being legally conducted?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obstruction_of_justice_in_the_...

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

#547
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…

[deleted]

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

#548
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 :-)

A better feature would be a 2nd PIN that unlocks the phone to a secondary profile, which you would leave pretty bare for situations like these.

Or smarter yet, not bare. Looks like a normal phone - innocent-looking vacation photos, innocent-looking social media accounts, innocent-looking email....

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

#549
post #195

I don't agree with all this and this increasingly fascist regime but... this was the most predictable outcome. Consider these two scenarios. 1. You factory reset your phone before entering the US and give it to CBP blank. There's nothing to find; 2. You have a self-destruct PIN like this guy did and give it CBP so it destroys the phone's contents. Tech people will say that these two things are functionally the same.…

A court has not yet determined whether the use of the duress PIN/password was legal. There's definitely no consensus among legal experts of it being illegal as you're portraying it. The US has strong legal protections against self-incrimination and unreasonable searches despite erosion of how much people's rights are respected. A factory reset done in anticipation of a search is not as different from using a duress f…

I used a very specific word for a very specific reason. That word was "spoliation". It is a legal word. It means destroying evidence but it means more than that.

If you're the subject of a lawful search and you destroy evidence rather than handing it over, that's spoliation. It has legal consequences. Courts are allowed to assume that whatever was destroyed was detrimental to you or your case. You can be charged with it as well. That's basically what happened here.

Consider this example: many companies have an email retention policy where emails will be automatically deleted after a period. I've heard of cases where this has been as little as 14 days. Typically though it's 1-5 years. One of the reasons companies do this is so discovery can't go and dredge up something really old in a lawsuit.

If this is a company policy then that's actually fine (ignoring any regulations or legislation tabout required retention).

Once you get subpoenaed you may get a hold on your email. The company is then required to retain it reagardless of this policy. If you then delete an email, that too is spoliation.

Do you see the difference? CBP can search your device. As soon as they request it, deleting the contents, regardless of what it contains is a crime. Wiping your phone before every border crossing as standard practice is not.

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

#550
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 i…

> 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.

You added it by copying Blackberry[1]? But seriously how did you think of that feature?

Genius feature when you put it like that.

[1] https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/40700-grapheneos-protection...

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