Ain’t that some BS
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Everyone is cheering but the case was not thrown out yet. For now we just know this is technically possible which we knew already. Now we will find out if you can do this and not go to jail. I will cheer when this guy walks free.
I like this guy. Oh, you wanna see my phone? Fine, here ya go asshole.
What a great idea. If I was able to I’d create a free Android and iOS app that did this exact same thing.
GrapheneOS has this feature. Also ripple
And the article mentions that it actually was GrapheneOS on his phone.
I doubt either OS would allow a simple app to wipe the whole device.
Guy was innocent until they had proof of a crime. They didnt have any proof so boohoo for them. And they charged him of damaging property. Its his property, and its not damaged.
The intent of the law was to have something to charge corporate fraudsters with if they destroyed the accounting records with proof of their fraud when served a warrant. Or illegal drug manufacturers destroying their chemlab. Ownership of the property doesn’t come into it.
The envisioned cases were always domestic crime investigations where there was already enough evidence to get a warrant. The application at customs where they don’t need a warrant is the novelty, and I really hope the government loses its case.
That isn’t their property. That belongs to the company.
Case should be thrown out and the prosecutors charged with something.
Shit, if he set his phone on fire, that’s still just his property.
Good. We all need to set this up. Fuck ICE and TSA.
It exists for a reason, they couldn’t have shown better why if they’d been paid to film a commercial.
Friendly reminder that, per the fifth amendment, you are not required to disclose your passwords to the authorities under any circumstances. This protection does not apply to biometric authentication, so don’t enable those methods.
Cute that you think the Constitution still exists.
It is actually harder to torture a password out of someone than hold the phone up to their face.
Constitution ain’t got shit to do with that one way or another.
Yep.
Biometrics are SUPER unsafe, and insecure, because you can be physically forced to put your finger on a sensor, or to stand still for them to hold a phone infront of your face for faceid. I’ve literally seen videos of cops holding a guy in a choke hold whole another cop unlocks his phone with his face.
but they can’t physically manhandle you into typing in a password.
We aren’t quite to the torture for password stage yet.
even with torture, you’d have to voluntarily give up the password.
as opposed to biometrics, where they can literally just overpower you and force you to use it. Or use it when you’re unconscious… or maybe even after you’re dead.
I like to set my Biometrics to an odd finger instead of the expectation
Yep, that’ll slow them down as they make you use the other fingers until one works.
Gotta use the knuckle of your pinkie
Toe unlock for the win
If you have iOS you can disable it quickly by spamming the power button (button on right hand side of screen) 5 times.
Depending on your skin color, reaching into your pocket to do this may be punishable by immediate execution. Just don’t use biometrics.
Depending on your skin color being pulled over is punishable by execution. It’s an easy way to disable it while handing it over if you have that chance.
Same with android
The thing with android lockdown is that it turns back off as soon as you unlock it. For something like going to an airport, I would go into settings and disable “use biometrics to unlock” under the biometric settings. Lockdown is more of an “oh shit” button, if you have the time to do it properly make it stick until you’re safe.
Better to just turn the phone off if you’re in the power menu anyway. On boot up the phone requires a non-biometric credential to decrypt it.
I did that, and it tried to call 911
I wish I read more of this thread first. In GrapheneOS it first opened my camera app and then attempted calling 911. Freaked me out so much cause I was relaxing in bed with my titties out. Also the setting is called Emergency SOS if you want to disable it.
For some android phones it’s a setting. I have long press with an option for Lockdown and 5 click duress
Not sure what the difference is between my adroid locking when I just tap the power button one ane when I enter lockdown mode after holding the power button. They both get to tge same needing to put in a pattern to unlock.
For me its power + volume up
Android varies a bit depending on the software/manufacturer. It was added in Android 9 but some software releases remove it.
By default it is not enabled. You can search settings for “Lockdown”, and then it will just be an option in the menu when you hold the power button.
Looks like it’s now a permanent item in the power menu. (I just got upgraded to Android 17 and couldn’t find it in settings, but it is on my power/reboot menu options already.) Thanks for the tip, I didn’t even realize Android had this.
That’s honestly a curiosity in this for me. You dont have to unlock your phone for them but the fact that he was made to even with a duress pass makes me think that this was more than a standard stop.
He absolutely didnt have to unlock it under the law.
He was within his right to wipe it.
But what led him to doing so?
This isnt a defence of the boarder officers. Im just curious what the other side of the story is.
Edit: ah there it is. They suspected him of having csam and by implication being a sex tourist.
Heavy accusations. So they did have some suspicion (or at least claimed to) to justify the search.
From The Guardian article on the same incident:
The defendant, Sam Tunick, was stopped for interrogation at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport on 24 January last year, after vacationing in the Dominican Republic. Unbeknown to him, federal authorities had put him on a terrorism watchlist because of his alleged association with the movement against Cop City.
Ahhhh
thanks!
Once again fascists cry protecting kids to violate rights.
Every time I hear someone invoking “protect the kids” I know 3 things.
- It has nothing to do with protecting kids, they’re hiding their intention.
- It’s probably some outrageous bullshit they absolutely need to hide.
- It’s probably because they are fucking kids.
Number 3 was added recently because apparently based on the facts we now know… that is MUCH more common with these people than I could even imagine.
That’s why I stopped using Google for anything. Their AI is calling people child abusers left and right. And even after a person is cleared by law enforcement, they will not let that person get their data back. It could be innocent family photos or legal adult content. Haven’t used their services in years after the NYT articles and the several others from other news organizations that followed about their awful practices. They don’t care about correcting false positives only about the perception to share holders that they are fighting child abuse by closing almost a million accounts a year. Same for Meta, who closes many millions of account per year to stop child abuse, while hosting child abuse for advertisers. I didn’t supply links to the articles, but they can be easily found through a StartPage or DuckDuckGo search or which ever search engine you use (hopefully not Google).
The crazy thing is that tech CEOs hear that their bullshit machines are calling people pedos, so they look and at their own CEO social circles and see 50% are pedos, and think, “sounds about right”.
Then they ask Grok to undress another minor.
Since they just let him walk after the phone wiped itself, they clearly didn’t actually believe he was a risk of any kind. If there was any actual reason for suspicion they would/should have detained him outright.
He was put on a terrorist watchlist because he didnt want his tax dollars funding a cop city. Thats reason enough for the judge to throw this out.
There are some of us that know these things happen and take steps to protect our rights and personal data.
Most all of us here have multiple methods employed to avoid being tracked online via browser plugins or whatever. Some of us take it a step further and lock our phones should an encounter with LEOs be a possibility, and he had a wipe command to go even further.
These days the US is closer to a lot of fascist authoritarian states, and it’s probably only a short time before they throw people in jail for whatever manufactured reason because they wipe a phone before the Gestapo can pry into it and charge us with the crime of being un-American or some shit because we posted a meme mocking trump.
If you really want to pass through customs without issues, you need to do what most companies do through their IT. use a burner phone or laptop. Of course you may get a bit of scrutiny, make sure you take heaps of holiday snaps and send messages and such before you leave so theres something for the fart tube pigs to look through.
While valid, I think people have a hard enough time affording the phone they have now. Adding an additional line or better yet separate account and international data access might be too much. I think for most people turning their phone completely off with biometrics disabled and a decent lock password is about the best we could expect.
Doesn’t matter what his reasons were to wipe the device, that’s the point of privacy, not to hide criminal activities.
The police has access to computer software that can crack 8 digit smarphone pins in minutes.
Not every police department, and not every phone, of course. But the software exists. Refuse to unlock your phone and they just take it from you and crack it open anyway.
I’m not saying this to tell you to just comply. I’m telling you this to let you know that refusing to unlock your phone does largely nothing.
It takes more than minutes, especially with an OS that doesn’t have a back door built into it. Also that’s a forensic tool, IIRC those require a warrant to use.
They’d need a warrant signed by a judge to crack your passcode or everything would be inadmissible and any half-assed lawyer could win you a civil rights settlement.
Not at customs. Courts have consistently held warrantless searches are a-ok before you are officially admitted entry to the country.
I know, what about a fake password that wipes the phone?
We have come full circle.
How is this illegal?
It’s not. Authoritarians want it to be.
I was kind of flabbergasted when a police office interviewed in this video just straight up said you have a right to privacy in your home, but as soon as you step out, gone.
But if he wants to spy on you in your home, suddenly there’s a perfectly valid reason (in hsi book) why your house is special and doesn’t get the right.
to be fair there’s a flip side to that too. I don’t want to be charged with invasion of privacy because I took a photo of my friend at a party and someone is in the background who sues me.
Even if he did, so what? His phone, his property, his business. He should be able to do what he wants.
SECURE IN YOUR PERSONAL EFFECTS AND DOCUMENTS
-Bill of Suggestions
“except within 100 miles of the border where you have no rights at all, because that’s convenient for me so I made it the fuck up”
–SCOTUS, defender of FREEDOM
He wasn’t being charged with anything at the time.
Unless he was subpoenaed is this a crime?
The laws are now made up when needed and justice doesn’t matter. So, yes. Anything the authorities don’t like is a crime in a fascist regime.
Kinda wild that most Americans are just going about their day while this is going on all around them.
Americans have a false belief in their elections and that they can simply vote this away later. Or when that illusion is shattered, they often develop a political nihilism, having no further concept of political power.
This is not actually unique to Americans, either.
This is particularly frustrating amongst my Chinese friends who just absolutely trip over themselves to defend the status quo because one person can’t change the world etc.
thats because they have voted for octogenarians the last couple of times. might as well run the elections at nursing homes.
They too busy getting by day by day, as designed by the billionaire-run system. Commuting back and forth possibly up to an hour each way, getting paid a fraction of what they should be, unable to afford a mortgage, little to savings, probably working paycheck to paycheck. Reliant on work for their insurance coverage for chronic issues that would otherwise cost tens of thousands of dollars because the medical system inflates all costs to justify its existence on paper. No time to research issues, reliant on things like an hour of TV news to inform them. And those are owned by the billionaires as well, pushing their propaganda and ignoring the real issues.
There are a lot of smaller independent things keeping people busy and stuck. While they almost all come back to the billionaires and end-stage capitalism, the propaganda from them is nearly inescapable for the average person.
And when you don’t have kids because you can’t afford them, they just open the borders and fill however many positions they need. because f you.
This. Freaking thank you.
I called my reps to tell them to oppose the slew of bad Internet bills (badinternetbills.com) and even something so simple felt like I had to make myself an appointment to get around to it.
And it turns out I should be calling a lot more often. Oh boy.
Working class folks must struggle excessively to even be civically active while managing a ton of responsibilities domestically. That’s why you mostly see old people at local government stuff.
And these keyboard warriors are talking crap because we’re not forming militias and running weeklong campaigns against the secret police.
I really wish direct action was a lot more exciting but while we’re fighting for our rights, any number of dozens of private institutions are waiting eagerly to punish us into the pavement for missing payments.
Yeah this system needs to be rebuilt from scratch, but this is what we’re working with right now, and it sucks!
Would be good to have our allies help but just like ww2 they don’t do fucking shit but cry.
Not our allies responsibility to help fix our country.
Especially when Americans are attacking their “allies”. Why the fuck should Canada help Americans when half their country is calling to annex us and actively economically attacking us for “wildfire smoke” (the same kind of thing we sent our own citizens to help the US with last year). Fuck that we’re done helping
The “not my problem” society.
Where have you been for the past 500 years that you think laws weren’t just “made up” before that? Standing here absolutely slapping the “stolen land” sign
“Wiping your phone before an illegal search is now left wing terrorism”
Under the border search exception, federal officers may generally conduct routine, warrantless searches of persons and items entering the United States without reasonable suspicion or probable cause of unlawful activity.
No.
Doing anything fascist and their gestapo dislike is a crime. being written law or not doesnt matter.
My password is the text of the 4th Amendment. I don’t unlock my phone often.
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt4-6-6-3/ALDE_00000239/
No need for a warrant, and the 4th amendment doesn’t apply in this case.
Under the border search exception, federal officers may generally conduct routine, warrantless searches of persons and items entering the United States without reasonable suspicion or probable cause of unlawful activity.
They have near autonomy to search you and your belongings for any reason upon entering the country.
I’m not convinced this applies here as it’s discussing traffic stops to look for illegal immigrants and contraband near land border crossings. The article is referencing an American citizen getting detained and having his phone searched in the Atlanta airport without probable cause or a warrant.
This is exactly describing that if you read the part that I quoted it specifically quotes upon entering the United States. At an international border. And air flight at an international airport is an international border. And they do not require a warrant. It’s already been settled in a court of law although as we can see that can be overturned however it would be very difficult to do so
We don’t have to let them. We can fight it to make change happen.
And we should. They are no masters.
Trying to fight them when you’re re-entering the border I guarantee you will lose. If you want to fight them, you do it in court.
But you do you
If you want to fight them in court, you need standing. To have standing, you have to have been affected by the law.
You can not fight them in court until they do something. You can not sue for what someone might do.
Unless you make up a case about gay people demanding you bake a wedding cake, then you can win at the Supreme Court.
This is no longer true. The Republican idiots on the Supreme Court have made a habit of ruling for plaintiffs with demonstrably zero standing. There is no longer rule of law in this country.
Is it true that you have to have standing to fight them in court, yes.
But to be completely honest, 99% of the people have no interest in actually going to court . they figure they can just fight them while standing in line.
You’re contradicting yourself.
Trying to fight them when you’re re-entering the border I guarantee you will lose. If you want to fight them, you do it in court.
There’s an implied “instead” in there. You’re saying don’t fight them at the border, because you will lose. INSTEAD, fight them in court.
To fight them in court, you have to have standing. You get standing by fighting them at the border and losing.
I’m not contradicting myself, you’re just not understanding what’s being said there.
So let me spell it out for you. If a person thinks they can just stand at the border and just fight it. And that’s it. And win. No they’re going to fail. Damn near every single time. It’s kind of like trying to argue with a cop alongside the road. Good luck you’re basically not going to win.
Now, if your intent is to fight in court, if that is your end goal, then yes you would have to fight it at the border. You have to say something at the border so then you have legal standing.
The point of my statement was 99% of the people have no intention going into the courtroom, so therefore there’s no point in fighting at the border because they’re going to lose at the border.
It’s like people pretend to know the law, but don’t actually understand shit.
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a duress password?
What a neat idea.I wonder if i can set that up on my iphone.
There isnt, for iphone
But you can set it up to wipe the phone after 10 attempts
I believe it’s only currently possible on Android. There’s Graphene’s built-in solution which uses a pin or password, and then there’s other android apps that can trigger the wipe if you get a text message with the code.
Reason n+1 to switch to GrapheneOS
OEM unlocked pixels are getting rare and expensive because of this. We need another solution. We need postmarketos to be brought up to usable
Some Android devices have a dedicated hardware wipe physical button, too, like the upcoming Click Communicator, iirc.
Probably. The “Shortcuts” scripting language is actually quite functional if not well documented.
Probably a good project for vibe coding.
Definitely download the “Pulled over by the cops” one.
It sends a text with your location to someone, turns off your screen, and starts recording video.
Good don’t give those fascist fucks anything.
And…? There’s nothing illegal about wiping your phone if not already under indictment of something
You sure about that?
Are you under inditement right now? Can you wipe your mobile device?
Your questions miss the point.
The burden of proof is on those making the claim that this not illegal, when that claim is directly contradicted by the news story right in front of your eyes. The person was indicted, which means the government had to at least convince a grand jury the act was illegal.
Here’s the indictment.
Here’s the law cited in the indictment:
Whoever, before, during, or after any search for or seizure of property by any person authorized to make such search or seizure, knowingly destroys, damages, wastes, disposes of, transfers, or otherwise takes any action, or knowingly attempts to destroy, damage, waste, dispose of, transfer, or otherwise take any action, for the purpose of preventing or impairing the Government’s lawful authority to take such property into its custody or control or to continue holding such property under its lawful custody and control, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.
Unless you can make the argument that the search itself was illegal, then wiping your phone when an officer is actively trying to search it is indeed illegal.
It seems the key thing here is to not confuse what actions you can take just sitting at home with the actions you can take while actively being searched by a federal agent.
You actually hint at this with your “under indictment” comment. The law treats destruction of evidence only as a crime under certain specific circumstances. Basically in a setting where it’s reasonably clear that you’re not doing it to stymie an investigation, then it’s legal. For example, you can normally delete personal financial records whenever you want. But if you’re under indictment for a financial crime, that would likely be illegal. So one of those is when you’re under indictment. But for the same reason, another case is when an officer is searching you. In both cases the philosophy is that it’s very unlikely that someone happens to want to destroy something for innocent reasons right at the moment they fall under indictment or search.
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Ok.
