alt Hacker NewsGrapheneOS Defends Data-Wiping Function That Blocked US Border Search
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The founding fathers would be aghast at what America became. Hard to imagine modern America passing some of those constitutional amendments that older America passed wayyy back.
This should be an interesting case in today’s legal climate
Obviously grafeneOS has no liability. But the owner of the device didn’t take the action to remove the data, the CBP officer entered it. We already have some precedent around being forced to give up your password.
How does that change if you are forced to give up a password that is destructive? What if the password works fine at home and the same password does a wipe based on location? Either way, the user complied, and did not take action to wipe their device.
The "agent entered password themselves, therefore they're to blame" seems as good of a logic as "I'm going to start swinging my arms and start walking forward, so if you don't move, it's YOU hitting YOURSELF".
This is possibly the best advertising. GrapheneOS was kind of niche before. But if the US Government hates you then you're on the right track.
This probably doesn't hold up legally, but it does hold up logically: if the reason a border search exemption exists is to prevent importation of material that is unlawful to import, wiping a storage device also fulfills that purpose.
As a GrapheneOS user and a U.S. citizen that cares about the constitution, I fully support the actions taken by the individual
It is illegal to lie to a police officer in the US. It's better to remain silent than to tell a lie. Giving a false PIN is a lie. And that by itself is a crime.
I'm not taking sides here, I just wanted to make that clear.
And you should understand that they can lie to you. That's OK and legal, but you cannot lie to them.
Couldn’t GrapheneOS provide a special pin which boots into an “empty”session? Where the user can install some default stuff to not look suspicious?
"defends" is doing quite a bit of flashy work for this headline. "Feature works as advertised, nobody upset" would be a much more practical headline.
UBS had a similar capability on their laptops so they facilitate tax evasion for US clients: https://www.cnbc.com/2015/04/30/why-did-the-us-pay-this-form...
It's great publicity for GrapheneOS, has probably led to a huge spike in traffic to their website and downloads.
And ongoing publicity as the trial happens.
Keep fighting the good fight GrapheneOS!
I was always worried about situation like this. Wiping out the whole device is easy to prove.
When I was designing my secure vault app for iOS[0], my approach was to make one of the “folders” (I call them vaults), to trigger the wipe out without any sign of doing so while retaining the data in the opened vault. It technically only deletes the index and the keys, and obfuscates them by replacing them with random bytes.
I already heard from a person that was forced to open their app but was let go, because they complied.
Someone who is a lawyer knows any details about the US justice systems precedents with regards to the fifth amendmend (regards to self incrimination) vs obstruction of justice (by destroying evidence) as would be applicable to a duress wipe? Also would the distinction of being (or not) read their miranda rights and placed under arrest in this case make a difference as to the status of any possible obstruction?
Please note that "search" does not mean agent just scrolling through your photos.
In Belarus, such "search" means plugging a USB cable and downloading everything from your phone AND connected clouds (Google Photos, iCloud etc). Then their software (bought for millions of dollars from a foreign security company) compares every single face in your photos/videos with every single face gov has in their database. And you don't have control of the downloaded data.
Unfortunately, these days with how governments want to spy on everything your phone is your biggest vulnerability. Better to travel with a dumb phone than something that will send you to jail. Regardless whether it’s wiped or not, depending on the mood of the officer.
Imo it is not controversial that intent to destroy evidence is ilegal is most reasonable jurisdictions.
Now, is this what's at stake here? Evidence of what? Surely at some point, clear allegations need to me made for which the content of the phone is evidence for.
There's alot of speculation of what the indicted person was involved in, or motives of the border agents. Or the insinuation that the tooling that allowed the alleged destruction of evidence is (or should be) ilegal or indications of nefarious intent by those who use such tools. This is all BS.
Am I missing something?
And this is why part of my plans for any international travel are to simply have a physical notebook with phone numbers to trusted friends/family and to buy throwaway devices on the other side (phone and chromebook or similar).
TBF, similar mindset if I ever attend defcon, etc. as well.
any reason with graphine os to wipe vs power off? Unless you have an easy bfu password doesn't it protect you from multiple password attempts?
Related:
US Government targets Cop City protester over phone operating system
yasss this is a feel good story they entered the pass themselves, so by their own treasonous logic, they should charge themselves. hope the crim charges get dismissed, and a civil suit is filed get paid, donate a chunk Go Team Graphene!!!!
The Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is supposed to protect people from random and arbitrary stops and searches. It's a fundamental American right. But in the 100 mile border zone, the federal government has tried to impinge on those basic rights. https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone
Next version should wipe the phone while presenting a dummy account so they can't easily tell anything is missing.
is it just me or is it about once a decade somebody gets publicised for this and the government *really* throws the book at them.
If only these phones could have a feature where you can enter a mode to encrypt segments of data with different encryption keys, all able to be unlocked still by one single master encryption key that you could also enter at any time.
Then when in travel, and about to pass a border, you enter that selective mode. You can enter a different password as the proxy to unlock the phone in this bare minimal data mode. The agents can access it, etc but wont have all the data. That data shouldn't even be visible in the OS, and if they try to copy the hard drive they will get encrypted data in the other blocks.
You still legally comply with orders and unlock the phone but the other partitions don't unlock/decrypt unless you specifically unlock them.
The border agents didn't act in good faith, regardless of what they're empowered to do. They wanted the data for one reason and fabricated another to prompt the device search. The data they were interested in pertained to protest activity protected under the constitution but the lie they told was about something criminal. That anything within 100 miles of the border is constitution free tosses that out, I guess, but is extremely problematic on its own.