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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

#581

Post by krautsauer »

Cider9986 wrote: post #560
gblargg wrote: post #531

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.

Not physically possible[1] to be deniable and a bad[2] idea. [1] https://veracrypt.io/en/Wear-Leveling.html https://veracrypt.io/en/Trim%20Operation.html [2] https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2082153517234676150#m

Question on a detail: It's not necessary to have deniability on the fact that you did wipe your device, just on the fact that you did it after you entered the border? Or said differently, if he'd wiped the device before entering the border, it'd be all fine?

(That of course only takes down the "physically impossible" part.)

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

#582

Post by catlover76 »

az226 wrote: post #539
gblargg wrote: post #531

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.

[dead]

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

#583

Post by Cider9986 »

hamburglar wrote: post #307
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…

I like the idea of a phone that automatically wipes itself if I don’t act to stop it. I wonder about the legality of that if the duress code is considered “destroying evidence.”

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49040537

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

#584

Post by seattle_spring »

TheqO wrote: post #217
pkulak wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's enough to shut down you phone. Then it needs a pin, and you're entitled to not give that over, I believe. So you should be safe, apart from some kind of rubber-hose cryptanalysis.

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)

That seems like a wildly different scenario to me. The OP is about a guy who has not committed any crimes. Andrew Tate is a known predator and CSAM peddler, with an active warrant in several countries.

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

#585

Post by whaleofatw2022 »

krautsauer wrote: post #581
Cider9986 wrote: post #560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not physically possible[1] to be deniable and a bad[2] idea. [1] https://veracrypt.io/en/Wear-Leveling.html https://veracrypt.io/en/Trim%20Operation.html [2] https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2082153517234676150#m

Question on a detail: It's not necessary to have deniability on the fact that you did wipe your device, just on the fact that you did it after you entered the border? Or said differently, if he'd wiped the device before entering the border, it'd be all fine? (That of course only takes down the "physically impossible" part.)

I do believe that yes, if it was wiped before entering, there would be no charges (unless there was a shadow docket open... that gets murky)

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

#587

Post by dyauspitr »

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…

Isn’t this basically what you do with an iPhone. You reset/format it then it gets back to its original state with iCloud?

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

#588

Post by TZubiri »

I left this comment 2 weeks ago on a youtube short on the subject:

"I have an opinion on the legal matter. But I think it's worth noting that destroying the data was a categoric strategic blunder by the defendant. If you don't destroy the data, but just don't provide the password, they might never be able to recover the data, perhaps with the exception of a multi million dollar cryptographic attack.

Destroying the data is a strategic mistake even if there's a mildly strong case that deleting the data is a crime, as it provides no benefit at the cost of increasing the risk of being sentenced for evidence tampering. I personally am not appealed by the grapheneOS thing, but I can't see any case were that feature would be beneficial, it sounds like a shitty technology."

To me this is evidence tampering, and again to me, it's a great law to have that evidence cannot be destroyed. But even if you argue that it's a bad law, and even if you argue that this was not evidence tampering, you have to concede that it IS the law and that it IS highly likely that courts will find it to be evidence tampering, finally that there is little value to destroying encrypted evidence. It's a categoric legally strategic mistake.

And GrapheneOS is a dumb product by consequence for this matter, unless you are like some high level spy whose security model is being tortured or dissapeared instead of being put to jail.

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

#589

Post by NegativeK »

fluoridation wrote: post #515
victorbjorklund wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not how the law works. If I put a bomb in a box. It will explode if a certain pin is put in. And you ask ”can I open the box? What is the pin?” And I say ”here is the pin to open it” and the bomb explodes. Do you think I can claim they blew up themselves ?

It's already a crime to build a bomb, so it's a moot point.

Moot to anyone who died, but you'd still be charged with the crime of building a bomb and the crime of murder.

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

#590

Post by doh »

gblargg wrote: post #531

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.

100% I have built similar behavior in my [0] encrypted storage app for iOS. User creates a "duress vault" which is an ordinary vault that user can store any data they want (usually something very inconspicuous). If this vault is opened, it will wipe out all the other vaults silently without actually showing any sign of doing so and still preserving the duress vault's data. Even if snapshot of files is made, the index and keys are gone and can't be recovered.

[0] https://vaultaire.app/features/duress-mode/

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