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Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border

nytimes.com

891–900 of 1001 posts

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

#891

Why American authorities are always attacking their citizens freedom?

[flagged]

Most parties are named the opposite of what they do. The effective way to name a party is apparently to name it after a popular ideology. That's why both the Nazis and the Stalinists called themselves Socialists.

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

#892

So we're presumed guilty until proven otherwise (the presumption is, any data we delete must be illegal; couldn't possibly be nude selfies that the government has no right to see)

Yes. It's illegal to delete your nude selfies to preempt a government search

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

#893

What I don't understand is if he just didn't give any password, he would have been fine. It's only because he gave him a duress pin that he's in trouble. So, in both cases the government wouldn't have access to the contents of the phone

He was viciously interrogated for three hours before giving the duress cod.

And I'm not fixing the typo.

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

#894

What I don't understand is if he just didn't give any password, he would have been fine. It's only because he gave him a duress pin that he's in trouble. So, in both cases the government wouldn't have access to the contents of the phone

They might have a way to gain access anyway. That was that case where the FBI got the locked iPhone 5C of a San Bernardino shooter suspect. Apple refused to unlock it, so the FBI paid a hacking firm to do it. If there's no known vuln to get into a phone today, I wonder if they'd hold onto it in hopes that one shows up later.

Any phone besides GrapheneOS should be assumed to be hackable immediately and automatically with a device they have in their back office.

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

#895
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knowingly providing a PIN that would erase evidence is going to get tough in court. But the man was also hated by the cops because of his activism. They were going to catch him for something, some day. This incident just provided the necessary excuse to lock him up.

How can they prove that? What if it was a glitch?

Because he told them he did

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

#896

I read a pretty compelling argument by a lawyer that we're looking at this the wrong way. (I Am Not A Lawyer) Their point was that if the law is knocking on your door to legally search your house, and you have records of your criminal empire printed out in boxes in your attic, or just non-illegal things you don't want people to see, and you burn those papers while the law waits out front, you're guilty of destroying…

Destroying evidence is legal all day long, even with the law waiting out front, unless some other precondition is attached to that evidence destroying. One thing that makes it illegal is (over-simplifying) destroying it when you knew you had a duty to retain it.

To the legal search example, suppose the police frequently stop by your house to discuss neighborhood gremlins. If they happened to accidentally see the boxes of evidence you'd be in trouble. You're allowed to destroy them though, and you might have a habit of destroying evidence for each of these gremlin chats. Doing so is legal.

Later, the police show up with a warrant (your example). If you think you're doing your normal gremlin evidence destroying and not blocking that warrant, destroying that evidence is still legal even with the police waiting on your porch to legally, forcibly search your house. The _intent_ behind your actions, at least in this case, is a core component of the crime.

Mind you, nobody will believe you, so you'll still have a hard time in court proving it (this is mildly in your favour because it's actually the prosecution's duty to prove your intent rather than your duty to prove lack of intent, but they're not exactly going to have a hard time convincing a jury that when you destroyed a bunch of evidence with police on your porch with a warrant it was because of that warrant), but it's still legal.

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

#897
post #186

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 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.

Only a matter of time until mandatory key disclosure like the UK and other countries. This overrides even the right to silence.

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

#898
post #493

I always enter US with all of my devices wiped and restore them from backup once I'm past immigration, simply because I don't trust government to maintain the security level my job requires. Now I'm worried that this will be held against me..

> I don't trust government to maintain the security level my job requires

What does the security officer at your company say?

Either you shouldn't be leaving with devices with the data from your job on them, or you don't trust them, but your job is fine with it.

I keep work things separate. If it's a personal trip, I don't travel with work devices. If it's a work trip, and there's worry, I usually take a loaner device usually with ms office and a vpn.

Usually the issue is not returning, but other governments.

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

#899
post #816
post #493

I always enter US with all of my devices wiped and restore them from backup once I'm past immigration, simply because I don't trust government to maintain the security level my job requires. Now I'm worried that this will be held against me..

This is absolutely a possibility and having a clean phone might be grounds for being denied entry. The border agent has a lot of control over your life at that point and virtually zero accountability.

It's not the same issue. From the article,

> After questioning, he eventually turned it over but gave officers a passcode that then erased the contents of his Google Pixel phone.

I don't see the problem being a clean device, but destroying evidence in the moment.

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

#900

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.

It's one thing to argue, even vehemently, that this should not be a felony (either as a matter of fact in this case, or as a matter of just law). But granting that it is or is liable to be prosecuted as such, I strongly recommend against giving advice on how to commit a felony and get away with it.
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