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

931–940 of 1001 posts

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

#931

Post by ImJamal »

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

What country does not have a law against destruction of evidence? It seems like arresting a person for a law that most countries have is following the rule of law.

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

#932

Post by sebstefan »

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…

This guy's been charged with obstruction not destroying evidence so they could still charge you with obstruction for failing to give a password that opens the phone up.

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

#933

Post by rdiddly »

ImJamal wrote: post #931
usern20260720 wrote: post #728

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is not a country governed by the rule of the law

What country does not have a law against destruction of evidence? It seems like arresting a person for a law that most countries have is following the rule of law.

Evidence of what? Had a crime been charged when the search was undertaken? You can't just declare things evidence in order to get unfettered access to them.

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

#934

Post by Gormo »

chb wrote: post #914
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…

It seems cute_boi has it right: the 4th doesn’t apply to border crossings https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Arnold

US v. Arnold was a Ninth Circuit ruling, and was later superseded in its own circuit by US. v Cotterman (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Cotterman), which ruled that a "forensic" search does not fall within the scope of routine border inspection, and does require individual suspicion.

This was backed up with even more rulings like US v. Kolusz in the Fourth Circuit. The Supreme Court has yet to rule on this specific question, but has issued other general rulings about cell phone data, like Riley v. California, which determined that data on a cell phone is protected by the Fourth Amendment against warrantless search and seizure.

If the case in the article makes its way up to SCOTUS, it's not unreasonable to expect that the court will combine multiple districts' established precedent that "forensic searches" are not covered by any border exception with its own recent precedent protecting cell phone data, and rule that demanding unrestricted access to phone data without reasonable suspicion is unconstitutional.

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

#935

Post by Gormo »

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.

> I'm sorry, but the Fourth Amendment does not protect against the intentional destruction of evidence.

Certainly not. But, of course, something can only be evidence in relation to a specific crime that is being investigated. If you aren't already a suspect in a crime, then the data on your phone wasn't evidence in the first place.

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

#936

Post by [deleted] »

Razengan wrote: post #743
frollogaston wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, yes. Imagine responding like this guy in Chinese border control, or even UK. The 1A, 4A, 5A mentioned here don't exist.

"wElL yEs, we're not completely fucked yet " - Saying that is how we got here America didn't have an abrupt revolution like in China or Russia, just the collective populace willingly being complacent bitches for the last 26 years

[deleted]

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

#937

Post by UltraSane »

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

Judges have been stopping hundreds of things Trump has tried to do.

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

#938

Post by chermi »

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

A UN declared right is not legally binding in general AFAIK. Assuming I'm correct, your comment is non sequitur.

Not that I agree at all what happened.

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

#939

Post by bergerjac »

ImHereToVote wrote: post #929
tootie wrote: post #915

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean we have the 4th amendment here too. But there are exceptions for border control that have been upheld in court.

Why?

Because they haven’t entered the country yet, therefore it’s a different type of jurisdiction with different rules & regulations.

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

#940

Post by b112 »

hamburglar wrote: post #727
seanhunter wrote: post #678

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Wasn't this about entering a duress pin? Therefore, the law hasn't decided on pre-border key wipe. Lots wipe their phone... yet no actions taken.

I believe the duress password reboots the phone. They likely know this, hence the different outcome.

Post reply on HN