Interesting, I had wondered if/when we’d get a story like this. It seems kind of crazy to me that this guy chose to wipe it in the airport instead of before traveling, particularly if the US actually has laws that allows it to prosecute him in this scenario.
We don’t actually have laws that completely apply here, so this is essentially a test balloon / attempt to set precedent. The guy was specifically targeted by CPB due to his past protest of a thing called cop city in Atlanta, he was added to a watchlist with no notification to him, and CPB told him this was a routine secondary screening and that they wanted to search his phone for “child pornography”. Certainly would be better to have a burner or pre-wiped phone but basically I think he was caught unaware coming back from an unrelated trip.
In any case majority of Americans do not expect to have to offer up their digital systems freely outside of warrant-compulsion, which was not in play here.
That said there’s a lot of twisted loopholes they’re trying to use lately like this, so unfortunately even if it’s not the law they may be able to make it the law via this kind of precedent setting.
if the US actually has laws that allows it to prosecute him in this scenario.
Big if.
Experts said the legal approach is unusual and may be the first time the law has been aimed at an operating system. “It’s concerning – and sends the message that [GrapheneOS] is criminal by default,” said Christophe Boutry, a cybersecurity and surveillance expert. Boutry and Bill Buddington, senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, both said they had not seen a similar case.
It’s not an issue of him ever thinking of choosing to wipe it during his travel, he clearly had no initial intent of doing so, which is why he didn’t do it before departing . What’s caused all the legal issues is that he decided to give his duress pin when his actual pin was demanded by the US border guards. The border guards entering that pin caused the device to reboot and factory reset. That’s why he’s in trouble. They’re claiming he purposefully caused evidence to be destroyed when an investigation was already underway.
I don’t travel overseas often, so yes - I probably would wipe it the next time. Restoring from a backup is pretty quick and easy these days, so I would feel comfortable leaving it in a barebones state until clearing customs and border security.
But I also don’t use GrapheneOS, nor would I ever use the duress PIN feature. I expect people using both to take their privacy and security more seriously than me and be willing to take the extra precautions rather than emergency wiping at the last minute when things go wrong. I feel like it’s pretty dumb to be an anti-cop political activist in the US at the moment with GrapheneOS on your phone and then not look into or think about any of this stuff beforehand.
id say the security from law enforcement is one half of the threat model, but graphenos is also about protecting me from google selling my data for a dollar.
Interesting, I had wondered if/when we’d get a story like this. It seems kind of crazy to me that this guy chose to wipe it in the airport instead of before traveling, particularly if the US actually has laws that allows it to prosecute him in this scenario.
We don’t actually have laws that completely apply here, so this is essentially a test balloon / attempt to set precedent. The guy was specifically targeted by CPB due to his past protest of a thing called cop city in Atlanta, he was added to a watchlist with no notification to him, and CPB told him this was a routine secondary screening and that they wanted to search his phone for “child pornography”. Certainly would be better to have a burner or pre-wiped phone but basically I think he was caught unaware coming back from an unrelated trip.
In any case majority of Americans do not expect to have to offer up their digital systems freely outside of warrant-compulsion, which was not in play here.
That said there’s a lot of twisted loopholes they’re trying to use lately like this, so unfortunately even if it’s not the law they may be able to make it the law via this kind of precedent setting.
Big if.
It’s not an issue of him ever thinking of choosing to wipe it during his travel, he clearly had no initial intent of doing so, which is why he didn’t do it before departing . What’s caused all the legal issues is that he decided to give his duress pin when his actual pin was demanded by the US border guards. The border guards entering that pin caused the device to reboot and factory reset. That’s why he’s in trouble. They’re claiming he purposefully caused evidence to be destroyed when an investigation was already underway.
It’s not that crazy. Do you wipe your phone every time you travel? It’s the most secure but least convenient option.
I don’t travel overseas often, so yes - I probably would wipe it the next time. Restoring from a backup is pretty quick and easy these days, so I would feel comfortable leaving it in a barebones state until clearing customs and border security.
But I also don’t use GrapheneOS, nor would I ever use the duress PIN feature. I expect people using both to take their privacy and security more seriously than me and be willing to take the extra precautions rather than emergency wiping at the last minute when things go wrong. I feel like it’s pretty dumb to be an anti-cop political activist in the US at the moment with GrapheneOS on your phone and then not look into or think about any of this stuff beforehand.
id say the security from law enforcement is one half of the threat model, but graphenos is also about protecting me from google selling my data for a dollar.