cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/49853131
Feels to me like GrapheneOS did exactly what it should, passing the US border test with flying colours!
Funny part about this lawsuit: “With a little planning ahead of time, you can always download the data you need once you get to where you’re going,”
You guys already spotted the hole in the burner plan. A clean phone and a wiped phone look identical from the other side of the desk, and both look like someone who planned ahead.
A burner only works if it’s lived-in instead of clean. Real accounts, months of boring messages, photos of nothing in particular. That’s a lot more effort than grabbing a spare handset the week before you fly, which is why hardly anyone does it properly.
Same idea with less upkeep: keep one genuinely lived-in phone and put the sensitive half behind a second PIN, stored so you can’t show it’s there. Then the thing you hand over isn’t a prop, it’s just your phone.
(I work on DeniableOS, which is that. Changes nothing about what CBP is allowed to do to you, and I’m not a lawyer.)
This whole situation is making me strongly consider bringing a burner phone on my next vacation. That way I can wipe it before going through customs.
I did something similar when I last visited the US ~15 years ago. I uploaded an encrypted backup of my phone to a server in my home country and reset the device. I then downloaded and restored the backup when I arrived at the hotel.
„unlawful to knowingly destroy or damage property to prevent authorities from seizing it” - but did it fucking explode, catch on fire, or blew some fuse on the phone or in any other way prevented it from working? No, they (not him) just wiped the data. I didn’t know deleting files off YOUR OWN DEVICE is a crime. I need to think twice before I empty trash on my computer next time.
100/100 remark!!!
„I think this case serves as a reminder that authorities may argue you knowingly destroyed data, so it’s better to not have that data on you when you cross certain borders.” Wow that’s an advice fitting entering Russia, Iran, etc. Nice club you’ve joined here
I just heard about this yesterday and it’s very interesting and fascinating to me, how the duress PIN worked if a situation like this arose. I cannot think that GrapheneOS team for implementing such a feature. Lowkey want the team’s input on this. 🥰
Sounds like the border guard wiped his phone, not him.
why are they so concerned about what you OWN
Can’t control people without controlling things. And vice versa.
Imagine being on a de-federated instance like lemmy and crying about how a COP in AMERICA could not harass a person successfully.Go back to meta choom.
…Who tf was complaining? You’re fighting ghosts.
What if you OWNed some child pornography.
What if I am a law abiding citizen? Should I relinquish my rights against unwarranted search and seizure because of ‘woulda coulda shoulda’?
If your rights can so easily be ignored due to some hypothetical scenario, then you never really had rights to begin with.
So are you saying you’d be ok with your personal property being searched without a warrant on the suspicion that you might own child porn?
What if you owned: weed/drugs, illegal firearms, items which could be used for potential murder, negative opinions about the fascist government?
This argument is shallow to the point where fascism is what you’re advocating here for. So what, if you did own something thats not law abiding - without any credible proof there is nothing there, and non of anybody’s interest.
Surveillance is fascism… it is clear to me that neither do you understand the word nor do you know about the most basic features of it.
Lets go by your logic then, What IF a cop plants contraband or CASM pictures onto your device?
not bro resorting to whataboutism.
Begone Fed
Privacy isn’t keeping everything about your life secret from everybody. Its about having control over who in your life gets to know what. Its the pretext for honest communication. Extreme surveillance will lead to people self-censoring themselves to please the fascist state.
??? classic statistic apologist rhetoric I’m not against holding pedos accountable, I’m against searching a man/woman/non binary’s phone without proving suspicion of OWNing child pornography… please educate yourself
Yeah I wonder what the penalty is for doing something legal with something you own.
GrapheneOS - the only OS that i just installed and forget about it. Sure i spend time to tweak things like profiles but thats it.
And I am a distro and rom hopper.
The security model is that good: duress pin, scrambled pin, separate profiles with their own passwords, usb c restriction (you can set it charge only, charge while phone is off (most secure state).
and yet people even here don’t understand why it would be useful even without the hardware security thinhs of the pixel
You can only install Graphene on a Google phone and there’s two big issues with that:
- you are rewarding Google by buying their hardware.
- it doesn’t matter how secure the os claims to be if the hardware is compromised and there is nothing you can do to convince me that a pixel doesn’t have a backdoor into your data at a hardware level. If I was a conspiracy minded type I might say that Graphene is a Trojan Horse.
He would have had a lot better legal leg to stand on I think if he had just refused to give them any passcode. Now instead of a potential case of being forced to compel speech, he is facing what will be argued is an attempt to destroy evidence. His defense is probably a lot stronger with the former than the latter.
Does it count as destroying evidence if they don’t have a warrant for it? I can destroy whatever device or document I want. It’s my property
To charge someone with destroying evidence wouldn’t they first have to somehow prove the evidence existed?
No they would have to prove that what was on his phone was evidence in the first place. Which is why arrest and search warrants list all kinds of potential evidence and if it isn’t listed in the warrant they can’t collect or use it against you.
I’m not exactly sure how this works during a border patrol search. It’s technically his phone and if it’s locked they would need his permission or a warrant to search it.
Would be cool to have your device partitioned by separate passwords, so you could unlock a dummy system.
yes you can. On Graphene you can set the main profile as just there with nothing except to control wifi/add esim/etc. Then you can create many profiles with their own passwords. You can store your work stuff in 1 profile, private stuff in another. You can even create a dummy profile with fake Google. .
The downside currently is that the OS autoboot to main profile. Then you switch to your other profiles.
This is an excellent idea honestly.
There are ways to do this on some devices. Here’s an article about it, Google translate’d to English:
That’s it. I’m getting a burner phone if I leave the country.
Edit: Serious question… what if you just wiped your phone and then restored it when you got wherever you were going?
Honestly I’m not considering leaving at all while this administration is in power. We’ve already heard too many stories of arbitrary detentions even for lawful citizens or visitors that I simply don’t want to roll the dice on whether my vacation ends with a nightmare or just another flight in as normal
If I have to leave the US, its a one way trip
Ditto.
What? US police can ask you for the phone password? No way! That is 100% police state. Stalin was amateur comparing to present day USA.
The important thing is this: can you still deliver lectures to the rest of the world on the Importance of Freedom Of Speech, and the fact that only Yanks have it because Elon can worship Hitler on the Internet?
And the answer is, yes. Yes you can, and always will. So the actual reality isn’t really important. Because all you actually learned from 1984 is that of the government tells you that you have freedom of speech, and also tells you that Eastasia and Eurasia don’t, That’s Good Enough For You and you’re The Free-est People In The World.
Yes US citizens cannot be compelled to provide a password, but biometrics such as fingerprint or Face ID can. Disable these when crossing into the US.
Non citizens can be detained and rejected for not providing access to a device via password. Best to bring a second device if you must enter. Depressing times.
I don’t believe you can be compelled to provide a password. That does after all (at the very least) constitute speech. And freedom of speech is also freedom of non-speech, they can’t make you say something.
They will however try to make you do that… In many situations authorities are allowed to lie to you. So that’s sucks. They can tell you that you’re required to unlock your phone, you just have to know that your not actually.
Also they can’t make you say anything, but they can make you do things, like for instance “put your finger here” or “look into this camera”, which is why biometric unlock is unsafe around cops.
There’s that one guy who is being held in contempt of the court (to be clear this is not the police asking for his password, but a judge in a court of law) because he won’t give a password to decrypt a hard drive.
They believe it is highly likely that the drive contains sexually explicit material of children, which is why he’s being held in prison until he gives up the password.
I would want to catch pedophiles too, but I seriously don’t believe a damn thing any branch of this government says about anyone.
For all I know he has a video of trumps night out at Epstein island and that’s why they want the password to destroy it.
Obviously probably not but still, I’m supposed to just take the scouts honor of our unhonorable government that this guy totally has this on his hard drive even if they can’t prove it?
They could say this about any of us at any time for any devices password we won’t give them.
I don’t agree with this precedent.
Oh yeah I think it’s terrible this guy is imprisoned for not giving up a password, for something they can’t prove. Like they shouldn’t be able to detain someone indefinitely for an unproven crime. At some point they have to release them or it’s guilty until proven innocent.
Anyone know if this feature is available on Murena e/os? Can’t seem to find it :(
I think thats a GrapheneOS only feature. There are probably apps that do similiar stuff?
Ah that’s a shame, but I hope they may implement such a thing since they are quite privacy focused.
claimed they did not need a warrant to search Tunick’s phone because he had not yet crossed the U.S. border.
Also no right to search / seize his phone then. US law doesn’t apply on non-US soil.
But what law/rights do apply there?
US law. But the law they used as a excuse is bullshit.
When in doubt, do not travel To US&A
If it’s not US soil, it’s not a detention, it’s a rendition, a kidnapping.
Its the same in the US. They can’t deny entry to US citizens.
