This whole thing highlights how insane US border law is.
Sam was physically in the US, but because he was on an international flight, he was arrested in a manner that would be unconstitutional anywhere else in the US. He was denied a lawyer, questioned for I presume hours, had his phone stolen without a warrant, and then was released because there was no crime CBP could figure out how to charge him with then and there.
Months later, he gets charged by a federal statute even though where he committed the crime was a place that federal law does? doesn't? extend. Apparently it's a very convenient place where the constitution is void but federal laws still matter.
Cops can't arrest or detain you without some articulable suspicion of a crime being committed. They can't steal your stuff to try and find a crime you committed. They can't search your phone without a warrant in which they provide a judge with enough evidence to reasonably suspect a crime has been committed.
Yet Sam apparently had no rights because he was put on a watchlist for exercising first amendment rights.
Very despicable behavior by the government and the federal prosecutors pursuing this case.
"federal authorities had put him on a terrorism watchlist because of his alleged association with the movement against Cop City"
Talk about burying the lede
Burying the lede on what? The individual in question was being targeted in part because he was exercising his First Amendment right to protest environmental destruction and the militarization of police. I think if anything this makes it more disturbing. The US government has a long history of criminalizing movements they don't like as "terrorism".
You're agreeing with the person you responded to (bdcravens). Burying the lede means that bdcravens thinks the true headline should have been about being put on a terrorist watch list for protesting a police training camp, not about the phone.
This is a technical problem.
Instead of wiping and rebooting, it should wipe while showing a lame spreadsheet application, or possibly a grocery list.
I don’t think a judge would be impressed by this. If anything it actually makes the legal case easier: there’s a legitimate use for a wiping feature on a phone (e.g. for theft or tampering), but actively producing false information demonstrates an intent to deceive or mislead.
Easier solution: phone wipes itself if passcode is not entered every X hours
Deadmans-switch, nice. I always had a weird fascination for that kind of mechanism, because it inverts the whole situation. Where before you have to actively wipe a phone, now them taking your phone may be the mechanism that triggers the wipe.
Is it legally better? Absolutely. But all they have to do is say "they did this as a legal workaround for that" and you're no better off, at least not without spending the same amount on lawyers. You can't out-tech your way around a corrupt system, they will find a way to get you.
Or just don't wipe your phone and let the reboot timer do its work and bring your phone to BFU state, effectively uncrackable.
The issue here is CBP was (illegally) demanding he give them his passcode (5th amendment violation).
Doesn't really matter if the reboot timer is triggered if the thugs have beaten your code out of you.
Sounds like a good reason to use alternatives like GrapheneOS. It doesn't take a big % of users to let the "using it is suspicious by itself" nonsense wear off.
Not to worry, but big tech and government are slowly crafting laws that make non-big-tech operating systems illegal in the name of protecting children.
Quick reminder to my fellows that if you discuss this story here, it will end up immutable and available to law enforcement and, e.g., H1B eligibility deciders.
Dark forest
Better to die on ones feet than live on ones knees.
Some of us are on visa and have our online presence routinely scanned these days. Asymmetric vuln. If that's not you, why are you upset when it is acknowledged?
It looks like there are a lot of issues here on the government side, but it also appears like the protestor intentionally gave them a password that, when used, wipes the phone? That seems like a clear example of destruction of evidence.
> That seems like a clear example of destruction of evidence
If he was under arrest, sure. The cops claiming this was a routine airport inspection would seem to muddy the waters, at least.
I don't think the crime of destroying evidence / tampering with evidence depends on what your status in custody is. If the police knock on your front door and you start shredding documents, that's still a crime.
Now, could that get tossed about because they denied him access to a lawyer? Maybe, I don't know about that part.
> If the police knock on your front door and you start shredding documents, that's still a crime
Isn’t the relevant bit whether you think you’re doing crimes and/or being investigated?
If I’m shredding while the cops knock on my door because they’re looking for a missing cat, that’s obviously not criminal. (I guess the more-pertinent comparison would be they knock on my door and then I put stuff in the shredder while I check around my home.)
If you shred any evidence of a crime you are guilty of a crime regardless if the police ever knock at your door or you think you are being investigated if you have the intent "to prevent the apprehension or cause the wrongful apprehension of any person or to obstruct the prosecution or defense of any person, he knowingly destroys, alters, conceals, or disguises physical evidence or makes, devises, prepares, or plants false evidence"
You're jumping to conclusions.
Deletion to protect privacy does not prove deletion to prevent apprehension.
I could believe that everything is wholly innocent, but wish to protect privacy regardless.
If that was his intent he shouldn't have handed over any pin. This looks like he was hiding evidence of wrongdoing and he will probably be charged with it. I am guessing his only hope will be that they denied his request for a lawyer.
His rights were already being violated. He was falsely arrested and denied his rights to an attorney.
They can prosecute him (and probably will) but he's got a pretty strong civil rights claim against the federal government for a false arrest and illegal search and seizure.
You can't arrest someone without a warrant or a reasonable suspicion of a crime. These thugs had neither when they arrested him, just that he's "a terrorist". That's why they were trying to get him to confess or commit a crime. That's why they didn't want a lawyer to get involved.
Under Georgia law (16-10-94) you do not have to be under arrest.
> A person commits the offense of tampering with evidence when, with the intent to prevent the apprehension or cause the wrongful apprehension of any person or to obstruct the prosecution or defense of any person, he knowingly destroys, alters, conceals, or disguises physical evidence or makes, devises, prepares, or plants false evidence
This would be under federal law, not Georgia law I believe. But even assuming it was under Georgia law: it hasn’t been entered into public evidence that the person in question knowingly destroyed anything. It’s entirely possible the phone had nothing of value on it; the prosecution is required to demonstrate that evidence was in fact destroyed or falsified.
> the prosecution is required to demonstrate that evidence was in fact destroyed or falsified
Is this legally true? At least in civil matters, destroying evidence typically causes the worst to be assumed about whatever was destroyed.
I thought the standard for obtaining adverse/negative inference in a criminal case was higher than in a civil one, i.e. a judge will typically need more than just evidence that information was destroyed. But IANAL!
Maybe you just get charged with destroying or tampering with evidence instead of the original charge? (Help us rayiner!)
Why do you think reporters would rather eat a contempt charge vs throwing their sources to the wolves?
It's too bad GrapheneOS doesn't support hidden volumes.
It can't because it runs on phones which only have SSDs which leave forensic traces. They would like to improve deniability but it must be robust, whatever they implement.
Technically that means the cops destroyed the evidence. Their investigatory department should be savvy enough to avoid destroying evidence.
That is not how the law works. Under Georgia law (GA Code § 16-2-20) it says
> (a) Every person concerned in the commission of a crime is a party thereto and may be charged with and convicted of commission of the crime
>(b) A person is concerned in the commission of a crime only if he:
(1) Directly commits the crime;
(2) Intentionally causes some other person to commit the crime under such circumstances that the other person is not guilty of any crime either in fact or because of legal incapacity;
(3) Intentionally aids or abets in the commission of the crime; or
(4) Intentionally advises, encourages, hires, counsels, or procures another to commit the crime
Seems like this is a clear case to me.
One weird trick to destroy evidence without creating a crime. Cops don't want you to know.
You do not have to give them your pin, by law. They can use biometrics to open your device, which is why you should not use biometrics for device unlocking.
GraphenOS has a couple of settings, a distress pin that wipes the device, and a number of failed attempts that will wipe the device. If the person handed over their "pin", they didn't need to