@The Rage are you guys covering the development of this case?

So, there is no such thing as private property in the Communist Federation of American States.

they buried the lead here, he was targetted and should have never given them any PIN code "Tunick’s legal team is now trying to have the evidence thrown out. It argues that he was questioned without being read his Miranda rights, that agents repeatedly refused his requests to speak with a lawyer, and that the phone search was an unreasonable seizure. His lawyers also say questions about child sexual abuse material were used as a pretext to investigate his alleged links to the movement opposing Atlanta’s police training center, commonly known as Cop City."

It is better to display information when confirming the pin, because then it is clear. "This input has been used voluntarily; if they are a stranger, they have used threats of violence to blackmail someone around the pin, this act is documented by a lawyer receiving the last speech recordings." Pin has caused them to destroy someone else's property. Maybe such a process is better.

I'm wondering if the smarter move is to use an obvious duress password, like 1111 and just give it to them. Graphene is pretty secure if you have the USB set up properly, and you have the right to remain silent. Problem is with borders is they can just really F with you, make you miss connections, etc.

"For example, would it be considered destruction of evidence if a defendant had written it on the back of the phone and the officers assumed it was the correct PIN?" Yeah, great, wife and daughter would wipe my phone on day 1 and randos on day 4.

Nice reminder to just wipe it ahead of time and store your backups on a server you can access remotely once you get where you're going. Phones are an awful place to store data anyway. Though admittedly I'm not sure of the fastest way to restore said backups -- seems like convenience is the big thing that drives people to just take their luck at the border. There's probably an app solution to be made here...

Next stop: man jailed for posessing a bricked phone

Does the constitutional right to remain silent cover pin codes and passwords? 🤔

Sounds to me like having pixel as your phone is a reason for suspecting & searching ?

Should a second, "mainstream" profile with nothing interesting, be a better option than an wiped option?

Good for him.

Actually the better duress pin is fully deniable encryption: you set certain policies on data, you insert a pin and only the data tied to that pin are visible. Those who see can't tell if there is something else hidden. This way you're compliant and yet still private.

too bad it couldn't have dual boot based on the pass code. use one code, get one os, use another get a different one. hmmm

Never has been.

Yes

Very well said. just wipe your device and then if they say "why is this phone wiped'? There's so many plausible excuses. You just bought it. It's a backup device. You haven't had time to set it up. Definitely wiping it after they get their hands on it. Not a good idea.

You could go for more plausibility to make them really ignore you if you want. Depends how involved you wanna get. But yea, "it's a new phone" is at least plausible, if not necessarily believed...

The app solution may already exist for rooted phones anyway (and be impossible on unrooted phones). OrangeFox Recovery looks like it will do this, to an extent that a restored recovery file brings you back to a point where logged in account sessions are still live. Not quite the same as Norton Ghost for phones but does look nearly as good.

Of course it does. By the process is the penalty.

It reads a bit like the border agents entered the duress pin. Shouldn’t he be charging the border agents with destruction of property?

> The charge treats the alleged wipe as destruction of property intended to prevent a government seizure. This does not seem like it fits the situation. The phone did not get destroyed. He just deleted data. Is data considered property? If yes, is not the burden of proof on them to show what he destroyed? But how can they prove it, if they do not know what was in there?

How about just have the absolut necessary things on the phone before crossing a border?

Everyone should do the same thing.

Gosh sure seems like he's not the asshole here.

I guess they can declare their own actions "reasonable"

I kinda like that idea. Just have an automated nightly backup so you only lose the last 24 hours of memes.

So what happens if you wipe your phone before the border search? Is it probable cause because you have a suspiciously fresh os and no contacts etc...?

This case reads a lot like they were already investigating him for sex crimes. It's standard operating procedure to trap pedos by getting them to cross borders.

The the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution also states that “No person … shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself…”. He shouldn't be compelled to give the correct PIN which could incriminate himself. Doesn't he have the presumption of innocence? The burden should be on the part of the investigators to prove they have reasonable cause and also to prove guilt. I'm no lawyer, but amirite?

Those that take privacy really serious don't have cell phones.

Yea...there's a spectrum, as with most things. Arguably having a dummy cell phone is less likely to draw as much scrutiny than showing up without one. 'I don't have a cell phone' said nobody under the age of 70 honestly. But anything you have at the border is a lot more out in the open than anywhere else you have it. And data goes over borders without needing to be subject to this state of affairs, if only you avoid physically bringing it with you.

I don't have a cell phone ... and I'm nowhere near 70. Got rid of it almost a year ago. Use one at home as a tablet, but I don't carry it with me.

pretty much the same here now

nobody under the age of 70 not having a cell phone is starting to change now too, large counter-movement!

Sounds a lot like “she should have wore less promiscuous clothing and maybe she wouldn’t have gotten rap*#!” …blame the victim much, Mr Freedom??

“We own your property” — U.S. Thugs …Anyone who supports this is a proud slave.

If data is property then people who isn't using GrapheneOS and other freedom tech are being stolen

It's not that he was silent and refused to provide the password. It's that he gave a command to the device to destroy the evidence, so even if they had a fancy zero-day, it was not there to decrypt.

Sounds like the state eased his phone. Sounds like it’s their problem.

Sure but the government had no fucking right so it’s good this happened and we can get this out in the open .

Well, they usually set the first case as an example so God be with him

> Unbeknown to him, federal authorities had put him on a terrorism watchlist because of his alleged association with the movement against Cop City.

the Guardian

US government targets Cop City protester over phone operating system

Concern over US effort to prosecute Sam Tunick, accused by authorities of wiping his phone using GrapheneOS

> The government was investigating Mr. Tunick because of his associationwith an environmental movement known as Defend the Atlanta Forest, whichopposed the destruction of the South River Forest for the construction of an 85-acre, $115 million police training facility known as the Atlanta Public SafetyTraining Center. (Tunick_54). While the government depicts the Defend theAtlanta Forest movement as an “Anti-Government, Anti-Authority ViolentExtremist Group” (“AGAAVE”), it has not put forth evidence that Mr. Tunickwas involved in criminal activity in connection with the Defend the AtlantaForest movement. (Tunick_6, 54). > Here, the CBP officers introduced themselves to Mr. Tunick and explainedthat they were “looking for people who are pedophiles.” [Timestamp 19:49:00].The officers never read Mr. Tunick his Miranda rights. The officers justified theirquestioning and demands to search Mr. Tunick’s phone by stating that they hadto confirm whether he possessed child porn. The officers never provided anydetails as to why they purportedly suspected Mr. Tunick was harboring suchcontraband. The government’s reports do not indicate any suspicion whatsoever https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/28513064-tunicks-motion-to-suppress/ To me, it reads like they were going after an activist. Agents at the airport told him they want to see his phone just to check if he is not a pedo, while they knew it is about something else. It is a common tactic for cops to lie to trick you into giving or saying something. Like here, he maybe be tempted to say "omg, I am not a pedo. Take the phone and look for yourself!"

@Anarchy Edu So what else do you want to do against a government that wants to rape you at a border crossing, rifling through your phone without getting into huge trouble? Easy solution: delete everything before crossing the border that the government shouldn't see, after you've uploaded it to the cloud. Delete the cloud app as well. After the crossing, download it back to your phone. What's the problem with that, Mr. Anarchy?

Your wording sounded more like condemnation than it did offering possible suggestions to others. If you’re not blaming the victim here, then good! I misunderstood the tone. I wanted to make sure you knew who was in the right and who was in the wrong.

What are you then?

I'm probably misremembering, but if I heard correctly, he provided the duress PIN to an officer and the officer wiped the phone, incidentally.

He is going to win the defense if he has a decent lawyer. CBP asked only for “the PIN” — no clarification which PIN they wanted -He gave them a PIN; CBP entered it themselves -Phone wiped automatically — he didn’t delete anything manually -§2232 requires intent — prosecution must prove he meant to prevent seizure -Duress PIN is a coercion‑response feature, not an obstruction tool -Password demands implicate the Fifth Amendment — seizure may not have been lawful -Statute wasn’t designed for digital encryption wipes -Any confusion, panic, or misunderstanding = reasonable doubt

he did not give any command to the device. the authorities asked him for "the pin". He gave them "the pin".

No. In that case it is EVEN MORE DIFFICULT TO PROVE INTENT. They wont even be able to prove it in this case because he was under duress, in a different mental state, and did not enter the pin himself.

yes exactly why he will win. he did exactly what they asked him to.

I'm just saying, they're not charging him with silence, which is a right and he is permitted to remain silent. He didn't say, no thank you, to their request for the pin. He didn't claim his right to silence and an attorney. He provided false testimony, in a pin that wasn't the right pin, and that pin destroyed evidence. At least thats how the prosecution is seeing it. You can't argue against a crime you're not charged with. You have to take on the charges directly. How do you argue that it wasn't lying about what the pin was/did? It was. It was a trick pin. It caused a destruction of evidence. It was his intention. Maybe this new charge is less than the charge they would give him if they found the content on the phone, but it's not inaccurate to say he took these actions. If the court agrees he took these actions and that these actions are against some code or another, which seems likely, then they will convict.

The prosecution’s framing assumes intent, but intent is the hardest element to prove in this entire case. He was asked for “the PIN” under coercive conditions, and he provided a PIN. They didn’t specify which PIN, and they didn’t instruct him to unlock the device — they just demanded a PIN. A duress PIN is designed for situations where a person feels threatened or pressured, and the environment he was in absolutely qualifies as coercive. That makes it extremely difficult to argue that he knowingly and intentionally provided a PIN for the purpose of destroying evidence. The statute they’re using requires proving intent beyond a reasonable doubt. If he was confused, panicked, felt threatened, or believed they simply wanted a PIN, any PIN, that undermines the prosecution’s entire theory. So yes, he gave them a PIN, and yes, the device wiped. But proving that he intended to obstruct rather than comply is a very steep hill for the prosecution to climb.

Yes, those details matter significantly.