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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

#901

Post by cvoss »

gblargg wrote: post #532

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.

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

#902

Post by nephihaha »

avazhi wrote: post #783
mda wrote: post #765

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your beef with UN and the statement itself? its quite funny actually. Do you support the mentioned law? Hard to understand what you are trying yo say.

[flagged]

The UN runs UNESCO, UNHCR, UNICEF and the WHO who have all influenced the direction of countries. The 2020 lockdown across the world was on WHO advice.

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

#903

Post by doh »

inigyou wrote: post #859
doh wrote: post #591

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% I have built similar behavior in my [0] encrypted storage app for iOS. User creates a "duress vault" which is an ordinary vault that user can store any data they want (usually something very inconspicuous). If this vault is opened, it will wipe out all the other vaults silently without actually showing any sign of doing so and still preserving the duress vault's data. Even if snapshot of files is made, the index…

Why does Apple allow this app to exist, when it banned Iceblock?

I am no Apple, but this is not a vigilante app. All it does is to encrypt user’s own files on their own devices. There are no servers, no backend, no snooping. It uses apple’s services (icloud) for backup and user allows it, error tracking to hosted posthog.

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

#904

Post by ajsnigrutin »

Zak wrote: post #189

For 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…

They could be, easily so, twrp backup (and clockworkmod recovery before that), you'd just create the image of the phone (all partitions, everything), dump it to wherever, and then restore it, it was a standard system for testing new android versions on the phone.

The "secure enclaves" and other related stuff have made this harder in the recent years.

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

#905

Post by mort96 »

DeluluDon wrote: post #837
mort96 wrote: post #751

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not in the US, but say I was. I'm fully on board that the country is slowly (or not so slowly) drifting into becoming a fascist state. Say I needed to leave the country for some important reason and come back. Say I didn't want my phone searched. What should I do? What amount of taking responsibility, making decisions, taking action and gathering support is gonna help in that situation? Technological workarounds…

If you want to beat fascism, use the fascists to beat it; not angry crying college kids who are openly loyal to Stalin. That stunt ten years ago failed for a reason.

I have no idea why you are talking about Stalinist college kids all of a sudden.

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

#906

Post by ajsnigrutin »

malfist wrote: post #500
grishka wrote: post #473

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those "nandroid" backups weren't "close" to that, they were literally that initially. Then, when Android phones started coming with the /sdcard partition mapped to the internal flash memory (a subdirectory of /data) instead of an actual SD card, the /data partition backup mechanism was changed to copy individual files into some sort of archive, but the end result remained the same. You can still do it on modern Andro…

How many mainstream phones come with unlocked bootloaders? Just pixel right?

Most do, at least in most countries.

Not by default, but you have to enable it in developer settings, and then it does a full wipe, so if you plan to root your phone anyway, you do that when you buy it (buy, test hardware, oem unlock + factory reset, root, actually start using).

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

#907

Post by madaxe_again »

gottorf wrote: post #846
madaxe_again wrote: post #748

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The U.S. is actively hostile to the UN as an entity, and to what it stands for, and has been for a long, long time - now, the mask has come off.

> the UN as an entity, and to what it stands for What do you imagine the UN stands for? Let's not make the mistake of judging a program by its name or intention and not by its output. Mind you, this is the same UN on whose Human Rights Council sat such eminent proponents of human rights as Saudi Arabia, China, Russia, Afghanistan, and Cuba. Besides, the US historically funded about a third of the UN, out of 193 membe…

The UN stands for the UN charter - which the U.S. was a signatory of, of course - but from the 70’s onwards, US support for the UN waned to the point where we are today, where a withdrawal is not inconceivable.

As to what specifically the U.S. has opposed…

The Vienna convention. ICESCR. CEDAW. UNCLOS. Basel convention. Migrant workers convention. Convention on biodiversity. Convention on rights of the child (even North Korea signed this one, but the U.S. opposed it, still does). Comprehensive test ban treaty. Ottawa, Rotterdam, and Stockholm conventions. Convention on cluster munitions. Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities. Treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons (separate to the TBT). BBNJ/High seas treaty. Finally, the Paris agreement.

This isn’t even an exhaustive list. Just realised I forgot about the Rome statute and the ICC. Oh and the arms trade treaty. And the framework convention on climate change.

The UN is supposed to be a supranational authority over all nations. The U.S. views it as a blunt force instrument to use against others, but disregards its authority in almost all respects.

It’s even codified in the constitution, as passing a UN treaty requires a ⅔ majority of senators present, unlike any other type of legislation which just needs a legislative majority.

Finally, in January this year, the U.S. left 31 entities such as UNESCO, the WHO, and the HRC.

So, what part of reality is farcical to you?

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

#908

Post by ajsnigrutin »

talon8635 wrote: post #838
Zak wrote: post #189

For 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…

So, how easy is this today on computers? If I have an Ubuntu 26.04 machine running, I can easily image the entire thing, completely wipe the machine, then reinstall from a flash drive and it behaves as if nothing happened? This isn’t my territory, so excuse my ignorance, but I’d love to know how

Just get a larger drive than the internal one, and "dd" (copy byte by byte) the whole internal drive into a file on that external drive.

There could be issues with the TPM chips, having to re-enroll fingerprints or something, but not a problem in the case of a border search, since they can't pull out anything. So you could backup your whole system, install a clean ubuntu without anything special on the system (just if they check), and then download the image wherever you are and do whatever you want.

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

#909

Post by ajsnigrutin »

skinfaxi wrote: post #605
Zak wrote: post #189

For 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.

Why would recording calls not be possible anymore? On a rooted phone you can do it, some amixer and arecords might be needed, but it stores the audio of both sides.

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

#910

Post by nashashmi »

hansvm wrote: post #897
gcanyon wrote: post #849

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 boxe…

Once police open an investigation or once there is a lawsuit served, destroying evidence relevant to that lawsuit is illegal.

The question here is whether the police were in investigation mode. I believe it is an overreach to claim that everybody at a border was going through an investigation. And it is also a overreach that everyone who is selected for search at the border is under investigation.

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