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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

#761

Post by attila-lendvai »

noisy_boy wrote: post #752
otterley wrote: post #698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a lawyer (this is not legal advice) and agree with the main thrust of this comment. The law is not “hackable.” Ultimately people are making decisions about guilt and punishment. And judges really, really don’t take kindly to defendants who think they’re trying to outsmart the court.

> The law is not “hackable.” The point the sibling comments miss is that for the hoi polloi, this one-weird-trick does not work because such laws has been written to broaden the scope as much as possible by heavily relying on intent instead of the micro mechanics (which keep changing) AND the enforcers focus on the intent. For the rich and wealthy, the law may be the same but the enforcement is wildly different becau…

i used to work for a rich one like that ~20 years ago. we were walking through the border without a word, boarding his private jet, and crossing the Schengen border.

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

#762

Post by garyfirestorm »

willis936 wrote: post #746
otterley wrote: post #698

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a lawyer (this is not legal advice) and agree with the main thrust of this comment. The law is not “hackable.” Ultimately people are making decisions about guilt and punishment. And judges really, really don’t take kindly to defendants who think they’re trying to outsmart the court.

Then why have circumventions of the 4th amendment not been shut down immediately in court (this specific case, ALPRs contracted by police departments)? Same question for the first amendment with the FCC using license leverage to control speech?

It’s a provision not circumvention, also not a hack. /s

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

#763

Post by [deleted] »

KoolKat23 wrote: post #759
antonvs wrote: post #742

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UDHR is a non-binding declaration - in and of itself, it has no legal force. The 4th Amendment of the US Constitution is more legally relevant, but part of the function of courts is to carve out exceptions to laws like that for law enforcement purposes, so practically speaking such provisions are much less absolute than their wording tends to imply.

Generally you can't carve out from a constitution, it is all encompassing. You can reinterpret perhaps but "carve outs" are only by amendment to the constitution. It's a concept called constitutional supremacy. There's generally ranking to laws. Think of a venn diagram with subset circles inside bigger circles. Constitutional Law > Statutory/Legislative Law > Administrative/Regulatory Law > Case Law/Common Law

[deleted]

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

#764

Post by attila-lendvai »

b112 wrote: post #740
hamburglar wrote: post #727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interesting thing is that the "don't carry the data" scenario of wiping your phone and restoring it after you're across the border is not functionally different from the "just don't carry the keys across the border" scenario. I would be comfortable with a dd archive of my encrypted phone contents in an short-lived S3 bucket that I could restore with a simple passphrase-derived key, for example. It's hard for the…

It's immensely different. Leaps and bounds different. Why? Well, once you have been told to unlock the device, you're already in a legally binding process. The phone is at this point evidence. It was not evidence before. It was not evidence a month ago. It really is just that simple. Now, they could view prior wipe as suspicious, but as a US citizen they cannot prevent entry. And they may be able to seize your phone(…

well, i guess the writing was on the wall, so to say, pretty much from the beginning: "don't be evil".

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

#765

Post by mda »

avazhi wrote: post #758
raluk wrote: post #726

From Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) accepted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948 -------- Article 12 No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-de…

[flagged]

What is your beef with UN and the statement itself? its quite funny actually. Do you support the mentioned law? Hard to understand what you are trying yo say.

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

#766

Post by tjpnz »

solid_fuel wrote: post #199
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…

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.

The only practical measure you can take is to wipe your devices before travel.

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

#767

Post by mrweasel »

grapheneos wrote: post #322
jmyeet wrote: 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…

Is there are legal difference between you entering the duress PIN and you giving the border control officers a PIN, which may be the duress PIN, and then they enter the PIN? Does that chance from you potentially destroying evidence, to the person entering the PIN destroying the evidence?

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

#768

Post by blinky81 »

avazhi wrote: post #758
raluk wrote: post #726

From Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) accepted by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948 -------- Article 12 No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-de…

[flagged]

This is a funny comment. What are you saying? The UN is one of the greatest achievements we've been able to do as a society. It's far from perfect. But would you rather live in a world without one?

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

#769

Post by bonoboTP »

otterley wrote: post #698
seanhunter wrote: post #678

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want actual legal advice pay for an actual lawyer. You aren’t going to get it asking a bunch of randoms on a tech forum. Since we’re techies we tend to think about technological nuances and have a certain literal frame of mind (eg “They can’t make it illegal for me to just type the wrong pin” is the type of thinking I’m talking about here) whereas in law weird precedents and your intent really matter so you re…

I am a lawyer (this is not legal advice) and agree with the main thrust of this comment. The law is not “hackable.” Ultimately people are making decisions about guilt and punishment. And judges really, really don’t take kindly to defendants who think they’re trying to outsmart the court.

It is somewhat hackable, but not to the extent that a computer is. Sometimes laws have some unintended loopholes that can be exploited for benefit if it isn't something obviously malicious.

But there are often vaguer higher level principles that can stop the fun, involving concept like "reasonable person" and "good faith" which are interpreted by humans. But this also doesn't happen always. Sometimes people do get away on technicalities, though many may suspect corruption in those cases, but sometimes the law is indeed powerless against certain novel tricks. There is no general answer.

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