Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Felony charges for citizen deleting phone data at US Border

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

641–650 of 1001 posts

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

#641

Post by jmyeet »

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.

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.

It would've been better if he'd crossed the border with a phone already factory reset and just restore it after entry.

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

#642

Post by bentley »

cortesoft wrote: post #633
karlgkk wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems overcomplicated and opening yourself up to risk IMO the correct solution is to erase your phone before crossing the border, and then restore it after you’ve crossed

What’s to stop them from seeing an empty phone, and then accuse you of deleting it when they asked to see it?

Lack of evidence.

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

#643

Post by 0xy »

anigbrowl wrote: post #218
0xy wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democrats built the blueprint for ICE's deportation program and architected the law that enabled it. Clinton's IIRAIRA bill literally introduced expedited removal procedures and created the concept of 'administrative warrants', routinely used by CBP/ICE today. Without the IIRAIRA, removal would be substantially harder.

IIRIRA was not a 'Clinton' bill. It was initially drafted by Lamar Smith (r) of Texas (HR 2202) and subsequently attached to an appropriations bill (HR 2610), and passed with a bipartisan veto-proof majority. https://www.congress.gov/bill/104th-congress/house-bill/2202 https://www.congress.gov/bill/104th-congress/house-bill/3610 It's easier than ever to check legal assertions before you post instead of posting incorr…

Huh? He signed it and evangelized it heavily, speaking about his strong support for the bill.

He said the IIRAIRA "ratifies my administration's comprehensive immigration strategy". In the 1996 State of the Union he strongly condemned illegal immigration and touted a 50% increase in border controls, while pledging to use federal government contract steering power to punish businesses hiring them.

How exactly is this not a Clinton bill? That's like saying the Affordable Care Act was not an Obama bill because he did not draft it. Just complete revisionism.

Some notable Democrats voted for the bill, too. Dianne Feinstein, Joe Biden.

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

#644

Post by anywhichway »

cortesoft wrote: post #633
karlgkk wrote: post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems overcomplicated and opening yourself up to risk IMO the correct solution is to erase your phone before crossing the border, and then restore it after you’ve crossed

What’s to stop them from seeing an empty phone, and then accuse you of deleting it when they asked to see it?

That isn't a crime. It's not a crime to travel across the border with a factory reset phone. That is a fine thing to do and a regular practice for people working in some sensitive areas.

The issue here is only that he deleted it after they started an investigation.

The legal eagle video in the post says this explicitly that he would've been fine if he had wiped his phone prior to the flight.

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

#645

Post by Grimburger »

ChoGGi wrote: post #572
jbird99 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A better feature would be a 2nd PIN that unlocks the phone to a secondary profile, which you would leave pretty bare for situations like these.

With some embarrassing porn; something that would make it feel legit and cause a distraction.

A few hundred personal dick pics and they'll be handing it back quickly.

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

#646

Post by RealityVoid »

bellowsgulch wrote: post #332
joenot443 wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I'm pretty optimistic that after the next general America will be ready to give up on the extremity of late turn over a new leaf. I fully expect a new president to be ushered in, whether R or D, and for some level of normalcy to start creeping back. The Sovie…

I agree. It's actually quite insulting to other countries whose actual atrocities were measured in lives lost. I voted for Kamala but Trump Derangement Syndrome is real. He's just a loser, he's not even remotely brave enough to be Hitler Jr. The guy doesn't have the stomach for real totalitarianism. Just populism, corruption, and weakening the country.

> Trump Derangement Syndrome is real

If only I could convey how ridiculous this sounds looking from outside in.

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

#647

Post by thefunnyman »

sfdlkj3jk342a wrote: post #609
grapheneos wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This has gotten much better fairly recently ime. My backups to WebDAV work most of the time and when it fails I get notifications. But it was quite bad for a long time so I sympathize with your point

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

#648

Post by RealityVoid »

rootusrootus wrote: post #466
spl757 wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US has it's mid-term elections this november, and it's possible, and even likely, that the Democratic candidates will win overwhealmingly. The Democrats are not a monolith, either, the Democratic Socialists of America political group is the very progressive part of the Democratic party, they are the ones that are not accepting dark money campaign donations. I do not agree with a lot of the unrealistic things that…

I think the best case scenario is that the democrats win sufficient control of congress that they can both stop the legislative agenda (to the extent it even exists) and interfere enough with presidential executive actions that everything stalls until we reach the next presidential election. I have exactly zero expectations of real consequences to Trump. He has far too much popular support for that to be realistic. B…

> I have exactly zero expectations of real consequences to Trump. He has far too much popular support for that to be realistic.

That's the problem. He has wide support despite gestures around. The thing a large part of the population supports _this_. It's not going away. This is the reason that people are bearish on US future.

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

#649

Post by sneak »

maxerickson wrote: post #620
sneak wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is false. If you can image and wipe your phone on the plane before landing, and write those random bytes to a usb stick, the usb stick will appear blank, because encrypted data is noise. You land with a factory blank phone. You clear customs and get where you are going and restore your phone. Substitute cloud storage for a USB stick if you do it at your departure hotel. There are absolutely technical solutions t…

How do you solve it when they beat you for having a phone that doesn't look like they want? Like whatever arbitrary thing they decide it should look like that day.

You can’t solve that in any case, but that has nothing to do with tech.

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

#650

Post by TechDebtDevin »

00dazzle wrote: post #580
carterschonwald wrote: post #542

Earlier quoted context omitted.

… that dude probably would have preferred not having that in their life

Not necessarily? He’s an activist. Getting arrested on purpose to prove a point is a classical activism move

[dead]
Post reply on HN