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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

#791

Post by paganel »

embedding-shape wrote: post #784
shuwix wrote: post #782

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's governed by the wicked version of Anglo-Saxxon law. In some cases it works much better than "criminal's have rights, victims doesn't" Continental law system in Europe. In other cases, it's insanity. In normal World, criminals have rights for any kind of defense. And that's good, because government have power to make anyone "criminal". Total breach of privacy by US government is a mirror to shitload of problems U…

I think even by the second word you're outside bicycling, US isn't governed by anything at this point, except some rich people. > In some cases it works much better than "criminal's have rights, victims doesn't" Continental law system in Europe. What on earth are you talking about, "victims" definitively have rights in most European countries, but the fact you seemingly think there is one "Continental law system in E…

> Europe isn't one country with one law system across the continent...

The Napoleonic Code is indeed pervasive across the continent. And, ignoring that, we have EU law, which is supra-statal law that most certainly and de facto has come to replace/impose on "local" laws.

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

#792

Post by unsupp0rted »

usern20260720 wrote: post #728
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…

The US is not a country governed by the rule of the law

Everybody of any means around the world seems to be eager to invest in this country not governed by the rule of law

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

#793

Post by bluebarbet »

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]

Angry vulgar comments like these are why HN should just avoid politics altogether.

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

#794

Post by acdha »

sneak wrote: post #556
rootusrootus wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've restored iPhones before, and it does seem pretty simple. Easier than PCs for sure. It's not instant, but the basic configuration is restored pretty quickly while the bulk data restoration happens in the background while you're able to use the phone.

It is not remotely simple. So much is lost on device change.

It is that simple for most people. Millions of people do this every time they buy a new iPhone and in practice it means waiting a bit while things download and logging into their banking app.

It’s harder for people who don’t use cloud services and have to do things like copy TOTP seeds, but in this scenario you want those to live on a Yubikey with a PIN anyway.

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

#795

Post by jmyeet »

m-s-y wrote: post #686
jmyeet wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that's not going to happen because evidence spoliation (legal term) is a crime. And that's what he did. You can say it shouldn't be but it is. This is slam dunk and it happens all the time. It's the same crime as destroying evidence that's been subpoenaed or that it has a preservation hold on it. And the court gets to assume that whatever was on that phone hurts your case, regardless of whether or not it did.…

What case law allows for the establishment of “evidence” before a crime was alleged? Is it not a catch-22?

First, the law applicable here is 18 USC § 2232 [1]:

> (a)Destruction or Removal of Property To Prevent Seizure.—

> Whoever, before, during, or after any search for or seizure of property by any person authorized to make such search or seizure, knowingly destroys, damages, wastes, disposes of, transfers, or otherwise takes any action, or knowingly attempts to destroy, damage, waste, dispose of, transfer, or otherwise take any action, for the purpose of preventing or impairing the Government’s lawful authority to take such property into its custody or control or to continue holding such property under its lawful custody and control, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.

Now what I think you're asking about is "adverse inference". In civil cases, the courts get to assume the evidence lost hurt you. In criminal trials it's a little more complicated but can show up as, for example, jury instructions. The court is allowed to instruct the jury that they can presume that the destroyed evidence was harmful to the defendant.

[1]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2232

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

#796

Post by weezing »

thesimon wrote: post #303
rootusrootus wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've restored iPhones before, and it does seem pretty simple. Easier than PCs for sure. It's not instant, but the basic configuration is restored pretty quickly while the bulk data restoration happens in the background while you're able to use the phone.

What about banking apps and stuff? Does the device binding still work or do you need to set it up again?

My banking app required to log again to the bank account to bind new device and that's it. iOS is way better in this regard than stock Android. You pretty much get 1:1 copy on new device in an instant with the exceptions such as banking apps but that's kinda understandable.

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

#797

Post by acdha »

thereforegrin wrote: post #781
qeternity wrote: post #736

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are misunderstanding the conviction rate. Only ~2% of cases actually go to trial, and at trial there is ~80% conviction rate. There are ~4x as many cases dismissed by judges before getting to trial. And the vast majority (90%) of defendants enter into plea bargains. Prosecutors only bring charges when they feel they have a strong case. There are many many cases which are never pursued because of this, and people…

wouldn't you go into plea bargain if you knew there's 80% chance of conviction of you don't? At some point the high conviction rate acts as a deterrent from not entering a plea. IMHO this is the case in the US and has been for quite some time.

That’s repeating the misunderstanding: the conviction rate is high because the government voluntarily drops or reduces charges when their case is weak. You have to think of it as “80% of the cases the government thought it would win” rather than “80% of all cases ever considered”.

What does lead to pleas is the expense of defending a case: if you acknowledge some guilt, you might decide to accept a lesser charge rather than exhaust your finances with no guarantee that you won’t get that lesser charge anyway.

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

#798

Post by weezing »

victorbjorklund wrote: post #366
throwaway219450 wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple makes this very easy. I broke an iPhone and bought a replacement. If you have iCloud, you login to the new phone and you can see which backups you can recover from. If you are transferring a phone, say you upgraded, it’s even easier. You can also image the phone with a connected laptop and store it on a backup drive, which is nice to not use up iCloud limits. The transfer and backup system are pretty much the s…

Aha that is actually pretty long

Last time it took me maybe 15 minutes on 600Mbps 5G to restore everything fully.

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

#799

Post by jmyeet »

stouset wrote: post #656
jmyeet wrote: post #642

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that's not going to happen because evidence spoliation (legal term) is a crime. And that's what he did. You can say it shouldn't be but it is. This is slam dunk and it happens all the time. It's the same crime as destroying evidence that's been subpoenaed or that it has a preservation hold on it. And the court gets to assume that whatever was on that phone hurts your case, regardless of whether or not it did.…

Independent of the merits of this case, is there legally a distinction between deleting a secret key that decrypts an encrypted blob (maybe not spoilage?) vs writing over the blob itself (spoilage?). I could see arguments for both, either, or neither but I imagine both are considered spoilage.

This is the problem I run into with technical people discussing the law all the time and I mean this constructively: stop trying to figure out technical workarounds or look for technical compliance. So much of the law comes down to subjective and/or holistic tests of the facts.

As soon as a lawful search is requested, situation has changed. The only question then is if you comply or not. If you remove the ability for that search to take place then how that happened is irrelevant. Destroying a secret key is no different to zeroing a blob of data. Actually the first might be worse. If the key is somehow recoverable (eg you have a copy on a cloud drive) then you can have ongoing penalties by refusing to comply.kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk

The only thing that matters is the lawful request. Whatever you do up to that point is treated differently compared to what you do after.

You might say: what if I add a deadman's switch where I have to type in a code every 72 hours to stop it wiping itself? Your thought process might be that this is passive. It doesn't matter. As soon as the request is made and you refuse to hit that switch knowing the phone will wipe, legally it's no different. You have destroyed potential evidence when faced with a lawful search.

This is what I mean when I say stop looking for loopholes or technical compliance. It does not matter.

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

#800

Post by evandrofisico »

braiamp wrote: post #619

I am baffled that the number of comments trying to work around a problem that shouldn't exists is above zero. No, this crap shouldn't happen. It's an appalling situation that it is happening at all.

A bunch of tech guys not understanding that you can't fight fascism with technological workarounds.
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