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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

#721

Post by blurbleblurble »

gpt5 wrote: post #658
gslepak wrote: post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It turns out there already is a legal precedent for this. It's called the 4th Amendment: > The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seiz…

I'm sorry, but the Fourth Amendment does not protect against the intentional destruction of evidence. He could have refused search without a warrant, intentionally destroying evidence is a different legal matter.

Evidence of what?

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

#722

Post by agile-gift0262 »

lisper wrote: post #718
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.” It absolutely is. The rich and powerful do it all the time.

it's not a hack, it's a feature

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

#723

Post by mianos »

gpt5 wrote: post #658
gslepak wrote: post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It turns out there already is a legal precedent for this. It's called the 4th Amendment: > The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seiz…

I'm sorry, but the Fourth Amendment does not protect against the intentional destruction of evidence. He could have refused search without a warrant, intentionally destroying evidence is a different legal matter.

There is no right to refusal at border control. It's outside the 4th amendment so it's not even relevant.

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

#724

Post by agile-gift0262 »

the lesson I take from this whole saga reinforces my convictions and what I was already working working towards: tie data to physical locations, where we still have rights. Self-host everything at home. Portable devices should always have the bare minimum data needed for the time until back home, and not even a way to connect to the data at home from a portable device outside home. You want my data? get a warrant for searching my home, and it's there waiting for you

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

#725

Post by dosisking »

Animats wrote: post #660

Legal question: if you had whole-disk encryption, and the duress password just zeroized the decryption key, would that be "destroying evidence?" Especially if there was a recovery possible but not instantly available, such as a Yubikey in a safe deposit box in a bank. That would take a subpoena to get, and there is an opportunity to challenge the subpoena in court first. Not instantly at the border. Something like th…

The law means nothing. The law is "interpreted" by judges. If the government wants you to be guilty, they will find a way to make that happen. They don't care about the rule of law. The US has a 99% conviction rate, highest ever in recorded history.

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

#726

Post by raluk »

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-declaration-of-huma...

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

#727

Post by hamburglar »

seanhunter wrote: post #678
Animats wrote: post #660

Legal question: if you had whole-disk encryption, and the duress password just zeroized the decryption key, would that be "destroying evidence?" Especially if there was a recovery possible but not instantly available, such as a Yubikey in a safe deposit box in a bank. That would take a subpoena to get, and there is an opportunity to challenge the subpoena in court first. Not instantly at the border. Something like th…

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…

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 law to recognize that they haven't achieved anything useful by forcing me to do that instead of just lose the key.

One thing this case makes me wonder is if the government would have a problem with someone walking across the border with a completely virgin phone. They must have wiped it, right? Would they try to prosecute? How could they possibly know the defendant in this case actually had anything on his phone before the duress code was entered?

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

#728

Post by usern20260720 »

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

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

#729

Post by 9dev »

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

at least not by universal human rights, apparently

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

#730

Post by LtWorf »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #111

All Archive pages, when accessed from Italy, now are blocked by the Government: "PAGINA INTERDETTA DAL CENTRO NAZIONALE PER IL CONTRASTO DELLA PEDOPORNOGRAFIA ONLINE (C.N.C.P.O.)" “PAGE BLOCKED BY THE NATIONAL CENTER FOR COMBATING ONLINE CHILD PORNOGRAPHY (C.N.C.P.O.)” Oh, we live in an interesting age.

Change your DNS in your browser to DNS over HTTPS. I use mullivad's server.
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