Earlier quoted context omitted.
That famous phrase from the constitution, "all men are created equal, except the ones not born in America"
The implicit "men born outside the US are not men" is arguable worse.
Apparently they can be women. /s
Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border
601–610 of 1001 posts
Re: Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border
#602Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a half-truth. In a full banana republic, technical compliance with the law will not prevent consequences for failing to do what the authorities want. In a jurisdiction with perfect rule of law, it always will. The USA is somewhere in between. One of the laws that's enforced pretty well in the USA is the protection against unreasonable search. Most of the time, a search requires showing a judge evidence that t…
I think I mostly disagree with this. "Technical compliance" is not and should not be the thing that a legal system is designed to incentivize, and should not be the criterion for "perfect rule of law."
What should be the thing that it is designed to incentivize, then? Compliance with the spirit of the law?
Re: Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border
#603Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder whether it'd be better for a duress PIN to delete existing data and also create a semi plausible artificial profile to hide the deletion event.
Maybe it could cause the phone to "randomly" bootloop or something? "Oh no, my phone is broken again, last time this happened I needed to do a factory reset"
Private 0-day exploits?
Have a phone with crappy battery and have it trigger a high processor load to take the battery voltage drop and turn off the phone? (Eg what Apple tried to prevent with the batterygate thing).
Re: Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border
#604The 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.
No recent messages and no recent email would be a pretty big giveaway. It’s a lot of work to make the decoy part of the phone look genuine.
Does the GPS trail of your running app show you were at a protest site? Better remember to remove that as well. What about all the photos you took on your trip - there’s location metadata in there. Maybe the messenger app stripped that out, but what about the one picture you sent by email - is that still in your offline Sent folder?
Re: Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border
#605For 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…
You have to ask yourself why this isn't possible anymore. Similar to how recording calls used to be possible but no longer. I don't know why it is but it is awfully strange that they keep tightening the belt on what we can do with our own devices.
Re: Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border
#606Next they'll be demanding the passwords to your dropbox and onedrive, because you "might have uploaded something from your phone before re-entering the country". Bet on it.
Re: Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border
#607For 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…
I really really want this for GrapheneOS. The current backup situation is terrible and nowhere near being able to easily image and restore the entire phone (or at least user data).
Re: Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border
#608Why American authorities are always attacking their citizens freedom?
Law enforcement are underpaid, overworked, and they aren't even respected anymore. A lot are fine, but a lot of people are ending up there because they can't get any other job [1]. I don't think these attacks on freedom are always malicious, I think a lot of it is people in law enforcement who aren't capable of understanding the not-so-subtle difference between "law enforcement" and "law authority".
[1] - See stories from 20 years ago about people being turned away from law enforcement roles for having "too high an IQ". Or recent stories (such as one I heard on the podcast of a former FBI agent) about new recruits who can't read.
Re: Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border
#609Earlier quoted context omitted.
With all due respect, this is a wild take. Things aren't great in the U.S. right now, but they're not even in the same universe as what the Stasi was doing. > I think it would be easier to understand the playing field and choose your actions accordingly, if you accept the US has entered its East Germany / late 20th century Soviet era -- except of course with 1000x more invasive and effective surveillance tech.
It's a very insidious, first you look all over your neighborhood flock cameras Hundreds of them came out of nowhere Nobody fought back . it's as long as you're not doing anything wrong you don't have to worry about it Then once changed the definition of what wrong means. If you're not a criminal you don't have to worry about it That's for your safety Then they changed the definition of what a crime is
You are arguing the slippery slope, which may play out or may not. Instead, argue today, with the facts as they are not as you imagine they will be at some future point.
Re: Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border
#610For 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…
> GrapheneOS has built-in encrypted backup and restore.
The backup tool on GrapheneOS doesn't work for a large percentage of app data. And it often silently fails to backup some data, so you don't even know where the gaps are.
There have been promises of a better solution for years, but I haven't seen any movement yet.