According to the article, he was actually using GrapheneOS and gave the border official the Duress PIN. So I guess technically it was the official that erased the data :-)
pjc50
Paywalled, but what is the actual charge? Is it some extremely generic "obstructing an investigation" one? The US is quite good about making court documents available on line, if someone can find it.
jmclnx
Yet another case that will waste the court's time and money. All this is doing is keeping defense lawyers pocket's lined. At this point, people should buy a burner phone when going to/from the US. In that phone only have a couple of phone numbers and that's it.
yellow_lead
https://archive.is/SflVC
neom
Legal Eagle just covered this, it's quite interesting analysis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2rokxux5cU
34679
Amendment 4: "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 seized." Amendment 5: "..nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
amazingamazing
If the government wants you no amount of technical gotchas will prevent this.
phoghed
Seems like it would be better to have a truecrypt type of situation, where if you put in a certain pin, then it just logs you into a separate OS with nothing you want to hide. Obviously have the duress pin if what’s in your phone is worse than the obstruction charges too.
quickthrowman
Would it be permissible to wipe your phone before going through customs to get back into the US? If they ask to search your already wiped phone, you aren’t destroying any evidence.
juancn
I don't get the legal contradiction. The search is supposed to be lawful without a warrant because you're not really in the US yet per-se, hence if you're not there, how deleting the data can be a felony?
adfm
I don't know about you, but don't people use encryption to retain privacy? And are people still free to manage their personal information? Doesn't a duress PIN present that information in its intended form? I'm confused.
tavavex
I'm not a legal expert, but all this seems to check out with US law. Americans need to remember that some of their constitutional rights don't really apply at ports of entry by design. This inconvenient truth for the land of the free has existed for a long time, this situation is just drawing attention to it. Their powers are far-reaching.
joshka
So the part of this that feels like it triggers the government issue here is that in effect you have a locally stored encryption key which gates access to the device, which was removed from the device due to duress password. What if we flipped this to instead be something that's explicitly not on the device? The border search stuff only applies to information on the device. It cannot compel you to provide access to e.g. emails stored in a cloud provider. If instead of making the process of stopping searches like this be a destructive one, we instead pre-purge the key but store it offsite with the ability to get it from an online location, then this feels like it's probably reasonable here. In the sense that the 4th amendment explicitly allows "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, ..." There's probably some sort of technical problem I'm missing here (or maybe this functionality is available already).
maxglute
What about none citizens? Customs kicks you out or throws you into a camp first. E: but seriously, what happens to non citizens. What happens if you bring a burner/wiped phone? I assume digit forensics can confirm it was pre wiped but what's topping them from alleged you wiped on US soil.
simonebrunozzi
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.
gchamonlive
It's like those notices "by clicking accept below you agree to giving up your data", by purchasing a ticket to visit US all your data are belong to the US.
thomasjeff1
Why American authorities are always attacking their citizens freedom?
marcosdumay
Goes to show that he should have made an LLM do it instead.
IncreasePosts
What I don't understand is if he just didn't give any password, he would have been fine. It's only because he gave him a duress pin that he's in trouble. So, in both cases the government wouldn't have access to the contents of the phone
Joker_vD
Y'know, makes me wonder why Democrates didn't disband ICE and CBP when they had control over the Congress and the government. I mean, they knew those agencies would be used in precisely this way, yet did nothing anyhow.
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Discussion Highlights (20 comments)
floathub
According to the article, he was actually using GrapheneOS and gave the border official the Duress PIN. So I guess technically it was the official that erased the data :-)
pjc50
Paywalled, but what is the actual charge? Is it some extremely generic "obstructing an investigation" one? The US is quite good about making court documents available on line, if someone can find it.
jmclnx
Yet another case that will waste the court's time and money. All this is doing is keeping defense lawyers pocket's lined. At this point, people should buy a burner phone when going to/from the US. In that phone only have a couple of phone numbers and that's it.
yellow_lead
https://archive.is/SflVC
neom
Legal Eagle just covered this, it's quite interesting analysis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2rokxux5cU
34679
Amendment 4: "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 seized." Amendment 5: "..nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation."
amazingamazing
If the government wants you no amount of technical gotchas will prevent this.
phoghed
Seems like it would be better to have a truecrypt type of situation, where if you put in a certain pin, then it just logs you into a separate OS with nothing you want to hide. Obviously have the duress pin if what’s in your phone is worse than the obstruction charges too.
quickthrowman
Would it be permissible to wipe your phone before going through customs to get back into the US? If they ask to search your already wiped phone, you aren’t destroying any evidence.
juancn
I don't get the legal contradiction. The search is supposed to be lawful without a warrant because you're not really in the US yet per-se, hence if you're not there, how deleting the data can be a felony?
adfm
I don't know about you, but don't people use encryption to retain privacy? And are people still free to manage their personal information? Doesn't a duress PIN present that information in its intended form? I'm confused.
tavavex
I'm not a legal expert, but all this seems to check out with US law. Americans need to remember that some of their constitutional rights don't really apply at ports of entry by design. This inconvenient truth for the land of the free has existed for a long time, this situation is just drawing attention to it. Their powers are far-reaching.
joshka
So the part of this that feels like it triggers the government issue here is that in effect you have a locally stored encryption key which gates access to the device, which was removed from the device due to duress password. What if we flipped this to instead be something that's explicitly not on the device? The border search stuff only applies to information on the device. It cannot compel you to provide access to e.g. emails stored in a cloud provider. If instead of making the process of stopping searches like this be a destructive one, we instead pre-purge the key but store it offsite with the ability to get it from an online location, then this feels like it's probably reasonable here. In the sense that the 4th amendment explicitly allows "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, ..." There's probably some sort of technical problem I'm missing here (or maybe this functionality is available already).
maxglute
What about none citizens? Customs kicks you out or throws you into a camp first. E: but seriously, what happens to non citizens. What happens if you bring a burner/wiped phone? I assume digit forensics can confirm it was pre wiped but what's topping them from alleged you wiped on US soil.
simonebrunozzi
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.
gchamonlive
It's like those notices "by clicking accept below you agree to giving up your data", by purchasing a ticket to visit US all your data are belong to the US.
thomasjeff1
Why American authorities are always attacking their citizens freedom?
marcosdumay
Goes to show that he should have made an LLM do it instead.
IncreasePosts
What I don't understand is if he just didn't give any password, he would have been fine. It's only because he gave him a duress pin that he's in trouble. So, in both cases the government wouldn't have access to the contents of the phone
Joker_vD
Y'know, makes me wonder why Democrates didn't disband ICE and CBP when they had control over the Congress and the government. I mean, they knew those agencies would be used in precisely this way, yet did nothing anyhow.