Live data from Hacker News

US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search

techspot.com

821–830 of 1001 posts

Re: US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search

#821

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are 2 cases routine inspections and targeted investigations. If it's a routine inspection, being uncooperative will probably lead them to escalate. You generally want to keep things routine and boring. If they want to access your device you have to weigh the costs, just log out of everything before you fly and throw away your device after they have had access to it, it's now compromised. If you are targeted you…

> just log out of everything before you fly and throw away your device after they have had access to it, it's now compromised. I get what you are saying, but this is incredibly expensive and not really practical for most people.

> not really practical for most people

Evaluate your threat model and the chance that a wipe and reinstall of the OS will be insufficient protection.

If you were targeted, you may have some tough choices. Might as well think about them ahead of time.

Re: US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search

#822
post #383

I co-wrote a border search guide for EFF some years ago. I was very interested in finding clever technical approaches but I later ended up feeling that I hadn't given enough thought to the overall threat model questions (even though the guide did address them, perhaps even somewhat usefully). The big picture problem is that the agents performing the searches have an enormous amount of power in terms of potentially se…

Why not have a passcode that boots in to a second “safe for cops to look at” partition?

That partition will always be obviously out of date and obviously not the main partition.

Re: US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search

#824
post #93
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people are aware that the government can physically do a lot of stuff, e.g. shoot you in the face for no reason. And vice-versa for that matter. However there are arguments morally, and constitutionally, and logically, about what can be done.

And all of those arguments are entirely academic, and subject to change depending on economic status, skin color, or nationality. Law is effectively a weak gentleman’s agreement we tolerate because the alternative is violence. (Well, law is enforced with violence too, I suppose.)

There is an excellent monologue in the middle of The Hateful Eight on this subject.

Re: US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search

#825
post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

1. "most" is debatable 2. "Some" is a superset that includes "most"

2. Most would not use "some" in such a broad way, though could only quickly find this law school's explanation that many>some (and obviously? most>many) https://law.marquette.edu/facultyblog/2014/07/commonly-confu....

Re: US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search

#826

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is first world on a technicality: the first world is defined as countries that were allied with the US during the cold war. If not for that, it'd be classified as developing. It's common to mix up developing/developed and third/first world because they were largely aligned during the cold war. But there is one first-world developing country.

Why do yo think the US should be classified as a developing nation? There’s a definition independent from 1st/2nd/3rd world [0] and the US’ income seems to clearly make it developed. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Developing_country

Who made them the law? I don't trust the OSI to define open-source, either.

Re: US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search

#827

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am not a lawyer but if you are a citizen they probably can't deny you entry but can probably detain you for an uncomfortable amount of time, and seize whatever they want. Your best defense is to have a burner phone and no other devices nothing they can seize that would hurt you. Even having a burner phone without any personal information on it can be deemed suspicious. It would be best for your phone to have a re…

You can offer the I don't travel with my real phone because it got stolen a bunch of times excuse. The point is even if they become suspicious all they can do is seize the burner ask you a bunch of questions etc. search you, etc they can't get access to your data. You can't get in real trouble, just majorly inconvenienced.

You "can't get in real trouble" but teh last time I crossed with basically nothing, they wrote a search warrant by literally fabricating almost everything in it. They wrote that an anonymous dog told an unnamed officer I had drugs, then a completely separate HSI officer signed it and a judge signed it based on complete inter-species hearsay two links removed from any named entity to face to question it.

So yeah you can be imprisoned, brought to ERs while they run up private medical bills (they told doctors I had drugs up my ass), have a search warrant executed, and then at the end of the day be chased by debt collectors for the search that turned up nothing.

Re: US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search

#829
post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right for non-citizens. For citizens, no one needs to believe it. You give them your empty phone and they can't download your phone contents and contacts.

Generally, within 100 miles of a border (which includes international airports) there is not a warrant required for a search.

Which is where 99% of people live btw

Re: US citizen charged after GrapheneOS phone wipes during airport search

#830

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I am not a lawyer but if you are a citizen they probably can't deny you entry but can probably detain you for an uncomfortable amount of time, and seize whatever they want. Your best defense is to have a burner phone and no other devices nothing they can seize that would hurt you. Even having a burner phone without any personal information on it can be deemed suspicious. It would be best for your phone to have a re…

You can offer the I don't travel with my real phone because it got stolen a bunch of times excuse. The point is even if they become suspicious all they can do is seize the burner ask you a bunch of questions etc. search you, etc they can't get access to your data. You can't get in real trouble, just majorly inconvenienced.

If you’re traveling with kids, they have all the leverage they need.
Post reply on HN