A recent case involving GrapheneOS’s duress feature has sparked a debate about the balance between privacy and law enforcement. If someone is forced to unlock their phone, should they have the right to protect their personal data with an emergency wipe feature?
At the same time, critics argue that the same feature could be used by criminals to destroy evidence during an investigation, making it harder for law enforcement to do their job.
Where do you stand? Should operating systems include features like this, or do the risks outweigh the privacy benefits? .
The person being searched should have refused to provide any password. US courts have agreed that the right not to be a witness against yourself means that you can refuse to answer questions about your password, since it is forcing you to confess to knowing the correct password to unlock a phone.
I believe that that is what the person’s lawyer is arguing, that he was never told of his right to stay silent, so the password is illegally seized evidence, and anything that law enforcement found based on the evidence is also inadmissible in court.
talk about the streisand effect… how many of you set up a duress pin in the last few days?
What investigation? What evidence were they looking for?
I saw somewhere that there was a claim that he had CSAM which was the initial reason for them to stop him (I believe this was mentioned on the Philip DeFranco show). If true, fuck that guy, but if that was just a claim they made to justify targeting a journalist who spoke out against them, then fully on his side here.
Note that CSAM is almost always the excuse governments use to go after personal privacy. For a recent example, the chat control bills in Europe.
Evidence of what?
What crime did this person commit that you needed the “evidence” on his phone?
This is as bullshit as seeing “resisting arrest” being the only conviction. You didn’t have a legitimate reason to arrest, or you wouldn’t have gone with “resisting”, you would have convicted for that reason. If they were probably doing something illegal, then the conviction should be simple and easy, not “well we couldn’t get the primary charges to stick, but when we broke his hand he fell, so he clearly resisted arrest and that’s why he’s in jail”
Csam
Is there a court case? A legal warrant?
Believe it or not, currently, at the border they don’t need a warrant to search your device: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception
What’s crazy is that it’s 100 miles inland from the border which includes all coastline. Basically making a giant 4th amendment free zone for the federal government
And including all airports lmao so it’s 100 miles from the actual border or from any airport.
You just casually carry that around on your phone?
well, in the case of an actual pedophile - not this guy - yes, I do believe they are either dumb or mentally ill enough to carry it around.
No, fuck is wrong with you? That’s like asking me “you just casually murder people?” in defense of someone suspected of murder.
Tell me how the guy in the post is suspect of csam then.
That’s what the cops suspected him of, i dont know how or if they were just completely lying
Exactly. Show us your house, your computer, your phone… If you didn’t commit murder and have kiddy porn, you have nothing to fear.
Do you see the issue here?
No i am wholly confused by what point you’re trying to make, all i did was comment what the police said they were looking for in response to a question asking that.
idk if the cops were completely lying, but someone asked for the context and the context is the cops said they were looking for csm.
used to be they’d have to prove that it was evidence in order to say it was evidence that was destroyed
now they can just point at you and call you “terrorist,” and that’s that, nothing you can do
welcome to fascism
It’s scare tactics. This particular case will get thrown out because you simply can’t have “evidence” with being a part of an official investigation.
So they’ll make a big stink about it. The poor bastard will be dragged through the legal system to great fanfare. The case will be tossed SILENTLY…with or without a counter suit and settlement for the victim.
No one will report on the settlement or the case being tossed because the purpose was never to prosecute, it’s to normalize the idea in people’s minds that the authorities can do whatever they want, so don’t fight.
I heard it wasn’t even the guy that wiped it - the cops allegedly tried to type in a code and hit the duress code. Idk if the dude was verbally saying the code or what but still
The boarder agents didn’t guess the duress code. He told them the duress code, and they entered it. This was only after the agents refused his request for a layer three times and admitted they did not have a search warrant.
I mean that isn’t true. They could have investigated someone know they have something know it’s there and now want it. Maybe not this guy but it is possible.
if that were the case they would have had an actual warrant.
It’ll get dropped, but the poor bastard they’re persecuting won’t get a settlement. The government will have immunity.
For me, it’s privacy.
But, two things are true: a. they shouldn’t be compelled to unlock their phone, even with a warrant. Like, unlock it yourself, you lazy, cowardly fascist and b. customs officials have legally been given the authority to confiscate and go through your shit whether or not we agree or like it.
It’s a strained legal analogy to the pre-digital world. A hundred years ago, cops were able to seize a key to a keylocked vault as seizing property, but they couldn’t force you to tell them the combination to a combolocked vault as that would violate fifth amedment right from self-incrimination. I agree in the modern digital era that doesn’t make any sense, but originally that’s how the distinction was made.
The risk absolutely pales in comparison to the privacy benefits (and the risk of abuses by law enforcement, that were already seeing bear out).
In the USA you supposedly have a right against self-incrimination under the 5th Amendment.
I don’t see how being asked to provide your private unlock code or password so that the pigs can trawl your phone just fishing for anything incriminating (or just add something incriminating) would be anything other than “self-incrimination”. You should have a right to tell them to fuck off, and this has never been tested by the supreme court.
“the constitutional right of a person to refuse to answer questions or otherwise give testimony against himself”.
The Supreme Court of the United States has held that “a witness may have a reasonable fear of prosecution and yet be innocent of any wrongdoing. The privilege serves to protect the innocent who otherwise might be ensnared by ambiguous circumstances.”
However, the conservative Roberts SC has already indicated their pleasure in weakening this protection - there’s a good chance they’d weaken it more, so long as it’s for a conservative cause.
Professor James Joseph Duane of the Regent University School of Law argues that the Supreme Court, in a 5–4 decision in Salinas v. Texas,[45] significantly weakened the privilege, saying “your choice to use the Fifth Amendment privilege can be used against you at trial depending exactly how and where you do it.”[46]
This country is just insane, china is literally a communist dictatorship and they have a fraction of people in prison that we do, per capita the disparity is even crazier.
I just will never understand how we can pretend to be a free country and we literally have more citizens imprisoned than any other country, by far. By every objective measure we are the policiest police state to have ever existed. You’re just a much freer human being in any other country in the world except maybe el salvador i think is the only country with a higher imprisonment rate.
Well it didn’t wipe itself, which is a big and likely legally important distinction. He wiped it.
Both arguments make sense, it being protecting privacy and it destroying evidence, so it will be fascinating to see what the ruling is and the reasoning behind it.
The argument could be made that they wiped it, given they entered the password he gave them. I know at least with regular police they can’t force you to give them your password without a warrant, which is the whole don’t use biometrics/face id argument, but I don’t know if that holds true for border patrol or whatever department these ones belong to.
If he told them the code to enter then for all that matters, he wiped it.
So i need a service that wipes my phone automatically when law enforcement tries to break in lol
Yes, like iPhones etc already have. They don’t wipe it, but they make it completely locked and unrecoverable.
Yes. Like the 10/attempts phones have ie had not sure if it still exists. Then you never sis anything.
hot take, he probably should’ve done this before the trip
Maybe they should add a feature where instead of completely erasing some files, it would just hide certain files when an alternative pin-code is inputted. Would work against these kind of ass-hats pretending to be police to look at your photos.
Problem is if it’s merely hidden they can seize the phone and get the data out somehow.
Not in a temporary stop like that. They’d have to hold onto it for years until an exploit came out.
They can do that at airports
Admittedly this is 2 years old, but back then even the advanced tech that the NSA used couldn’t break the security of grapheneOS phones.
https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/14344-cellebrite-premium-july-2024-documentation
I think that is a feature, at least for some phone OSes. Almost like a dual boot situation
Edit: I’m now thinking even the “wipe” feature as used wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow if the phone didn’t appear to restart. Maybe they can make it seem to unlock normally even when the distress code is used?
