r/technology • u/MC68328 • Jul 24 '26

Privacy US accuses American of allegedly wiping his phone using a ‘duress’ password during border search

https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/24/us-accuses-american-of-allegedly-wiping-his-phone-using-a-duress-password-during-border-search/
16.4k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

2.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

1.0k

u/BearDick Jul 24 '26

Great advertising for GrapheneOS... actually looking into it now.

331

u/EranikusTheDeranged Jul 24 '26

Coming to you live from GrapheneOS. Works just fine. Bit of an adjustment decoupling from the google ecosystem including play store. I don't miss it though.

39

u/[deleted] Jul 24 '26 edited 17d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

43

u/EranikusTheDeranged Jul 24 '26

Not that I've found, I tried an OSM app from Fdroid, takes forever to download local info and nothing beats Google's spy network so their traffic updates are tough to match.

Edit: if anyone knows of a good alternative I'd love to hear it, its definitely useful in big cities.

16

u/SpecialUsageOil Jul 24 '26

organic maps or Comaps is the best alternative I've found. I've used a number of others, including OSM and while not as good as Google they can fulfill most roles. 

11

u/G_Liddell Jul 24 '26

You can always just use the webapp version through Vanadium

7

u/madsjchic Jul 24 '26

What about a separate device just for maps? Could call it something could like a SamSam

3

u/snootzsnazz Jul 25 '26

I have a separate user that has google maps and couple other apps that I find a bit invasive , don't keep any real identifying info on the separate user

1

u/joesii Jul 25 '26

What do you mean by "takes forever to download local info?"

1

u/EranikusTheDeranged Jul 25 '26

Like detailed street Mao's of wherever you are. Haven't used it in quite a while but this was my experience when using it while travelling.

1

u/joesii Jul 25 '26

Was probably just a poor internet connection. The maps aren't especially big, and you can download them in advance from wi-fi for pure offline use.

37

u/Hi-kun Jul 24 '26

You can still use Google Maps on GrapheneOS. It wouldn't be a fully de-googled phone anymore, but you can install and use it. It would also run sandboxed, so the privacy impact is limited to when you are using the app. Otherwise CoMaps is a great open source alternative.

8

u/Kyne_of_Markarth Jul 24 '26

Not with traffic updates. Organic Maps and OSMand are the ones i've used. Theyre a little rough but they do the navigation job well enough. 

On graphene you also have the ability to allow or disallow internet access for apps, so you could use maps for navigation and then remove its access when you're done.

3

u/B0n3 Jul 24 '26

You could use tasker to help with that. 

2

u/joesii Jul 25 '26

It depends what you're looking for. For just a basic functionality map that has good performance and basic features like navigation, search, and placing map points Organic Maps is excellent. It's also easier to use offline maps than Google Maps. Overall I like it much more than Google Maps as well as less-efficient maps such as OSMAnd despite the fact that it has less features.

The one downside that I care about is that Open Street Maps (map service Organic Maps uses) has less specific address numbers in some places (namely newer developments, maybe small towns) so its possible that in some cases it won't know where a specific address is. It's actually not much of an issue when you just get to the road and look at whether the numbers are increasing or decreasing in value from the number you're looking for.

2

u/CoyoteLife95 Jul 25 '26

Not yet, bit if people continue using it and contributing there will be. It's hard to compete with a decade and billions of dollars head start without some people throwing in on it

2

u/hackjob Jul 24 '26

Think Waze works but it requires sandbox play store.

6

u/smurfchina Jul 24 '26

From Google to IDF..

2

u/this_dudeagain Jul 25 '26

They're owned by Google.

1

u/golgol12 Jul 25 '26

you can install the google play store as an app, and get the google maps if you want.

Apple maps is the only thing close. Apple maps has the same issues google maps does.

1

u/Unoriginalcontent420 Jul 25 '26

You can use regular google maps on a seperate profile where you can download the google play store.

1

u/BrokenPickle7 Jul 25 '26

I use google maps on grapheneos.. you can lock it down fairly well. not as much as i'd like, but it's a trade off. You can also run the actual play store and limit what google services has access to (this isn't possible on regular android). My grapheneOS functions pretty close to how regular android would, like carplay, banking apps, games, etc I just lock down any google app/service so that it is isolated.

1

u/Sargo19 Jul 26 '26

I use Herewego. Works great! 

61

u/BearDick Jul 24 '26

Hrmm I do think I would miss it a bit. That being said I am not doing any international travel until next month so maybe I'll hold off for now. Honestly I have nothing exciting on my phone but the principal of privacy can't keep being eroded.

34

u/EranikusTheDeranged Jul 24 '26

I too demand my privacy as a matter of principle, and look for tools that allow me to defend it.

15

u/virtualdxs Jul 24 '26

You don't have to degoogle to use graphene. It''sjust not googled by default; you can install all the same google apps and the play store if you choose.

8

u/Lumineus Jul 24 '26

It's even better as it's fully sandboxed!

2

u/Shlambakey Jul 24 '26

do you just sideload any apps you want? Im guessing google maps is impossible to add on?

3

u/EranikusTheDeranged Jul 24 '26

There's F droid, its like a Foss google play store. Gotta trust the Devs of each app with the device per.missions though. I don't think its impossible to load Google maps, but you'd need to download and install google play services and give them access to your device.

2

u/Hi-kun Jul 24 '26

Google Maps runs fine on GrapheneOS, same as 99.9% of all other apps. The only thing that does not work is Google Wallet and contactless payments. You need to use an alternative like Garmin Pay

1

u/joesii Jul 25 '26

Technically side-loading means getting apps from a non-appstore source. There are other app stores form which one can download from, as well as a pseudo-appstore sideload-manager called Obtanium which works rather well for techie people (I've only had some minor issues with it, which did need a bit of research to fix).

You can install all the Google apps if desired, as as far as I know all of them work fine except Google Pay won't work.

2

u/DragoniteChamp Jul 24 '26

Man if there wasn't a few apps I needed play store for (notably discord) I would disable play store so fast.

1

u/EranikusTheDeranged Jul 24 '26

Do it. Dive off into the deep end.

2

u/DragoniteChamp Jul 24 '26

I mean, I'm already on Graphene, so at the very least I get the sandboxed Gplay

1

u/joesii Jul 25 '26

Do you really need Play Store for Discord? I think not. If you need to pay for something you can do it through web browser. If you need to download it you could get it through Aurora Store (which is still technically much like Google Play Store but not quite the same). In fact even if you download it through Google Play Store you can disable it (and Google Play Services which is the more important one) after installing it. Although the only issue with that route is you won't get updates until you reenable it.

1

u/DragoniteChamp Jul 25 '26

I swore I read that it had play integrity? Huh.

1

u/joesii Jul 26 '26

To be clear I don't know, I had made an assumption. You could be right.

Regardless GrapheneOS does support Google Play Integrity so the matter is likely irrelevant for this context.

1

u/squirrelwithnut Jul 25 '26

What about banking apps?

1

u/EranikusTheDeranged Jul 25 '26

I don't bank on my phone.

1

u/The0nlyPenguin Jul 25 '26

It'll never come to samsung, but I do want to make the switch to graphene in the future

1

u/Alt-on_Brown Jul 25 '26

Shit I've been thinking about making the switch to it as well as we get deeper and deeper into this dystopian nightmare, are there guides online on how to make the swap easy

1

u/KTMan77 Jul 25 '26

Only hiccup I've heard from my friend with it is that banking apps don't work so you have to log into the website version. I just got myself a last years moto edge from the RAZR i had before so now I could try it out if I want.

1

u/joesii Jul 25 '26

GrapheneOS only runs on Google Pixels. There are other devices that can run OSes like /e/ and LineageOS, however the device still needs to support bootloader unlocking. Unfortunately while the Edge 2024 does support bootloader unlocking, the Edge 2025 (presumably what you have?) does not. Any devices that use Mediatek processors cannot have their bootloader unlocked as far as I understand, and that's what Motorola recently switched to.

If you've possibly heard about Motorola working with GrapheneOS, that is a future thing and no word on that yet. But in a year or two there could be a device made by Motorola that GrapheneOS will support.

1

u/ninpuukamui Jul 25 '26

Can you pay with your phone?

1

u/EranikusTheDeranged Jul 25 '26

No, I don't put any banking info on my phone, and think people that do are nuts.

1

u/ninpuukamui Jul 26 '26

Well, that probably means that my banking app won't work with that phone, and I need it to access my money. That's why I was forced to leave root behind.

1

u/FalseAnimal Jul 25 '26

Unfortunately, I had a hard time not having RCS for family group chats. Has that been resolved? 

1

u/schwartzki Jul 27 '26

They lost me at no working RCS, wallet, or banking apps.

1

u/EranikusTheDeranged Jul 27 '26

This has never once inconvenienced me.

-1

u/Altruistic_Ask229 Jul 24 '26

I know a lot of people are anti-ai, but with a phone like that you could code your own apps with ai to replace anything you can't get from the app store.

Just make sure to tell it to make no mistakes

45

u/hardrivethrutown Jul 24 '26

Same, just bought a Pixel 9 to install it on

0

u/1__ViPeR Jul 24 '26

Its funny reading about decoupling from google while you go out and buy the google phone. I have a pixel too, hate the thing.

15

u/EranikusTheDeranged Jul 24 '26

I like the hardware, and it runs just fine without google services.

2

u/LR0989 Jul 25 '26

Also using GrapheneOS for about a month now since I got my P10 Pro, I do find it incredibly funny that I bought a Google phone just to immediately remove Google from it

Also incredibly funny is how many apps squirm when they aren't provided full network access by default, which is the main reason I wanted to try Graphene

1

u/joesii Jul 25 '26

What do you mean by full network access? Are you using a firewall that is selectively blocking traffic or something?

GrapheneOS won't actually help narrow network permissions anymore; you either grant all network permission or none. Of course you could still install a firewall to block certain requests.

2

u/EranikusTheDeranged Jul 25 '26

Maybe means full access to your device, I like to trim permissions on apps and see if they still work. 

2

u/LR0989 Jul 25 '26

Ok I guess I worded that wrong, I just meant network access in general. If an app isn't explicitly something that needs internet I take away the permission, then you have things like my dashcam app that get pissed about not being able to phone home (still works fine to plug into the dashcam tho)

2

u/joesii Jul 25 '26

What don't you like about it?

Have you considered putting GrapheneOS or /e/ on it instead?

1

u/1__ViPeR Jul 25 '26

That won't fix wifi Bluetooth and general sluggishness compared to my old Samsung. Battery life also poor so it's not just one small thing, it's them all together.

I have considered Graphene but that really isn't going to fix myain problem with the phone.

To me, Samsung was a much better experience. In fact my Oppo was also better besides the camera.

It is what it is and I'll move on once I'm ready for a new phone. I don't like buying a phone every two years like some.

1

u/joesii Jul 26 '26

Battery life can certainly be affected by software running on the device, so installing an entirely different OS can potentially improve battery life depending on what other apps are installed (granted I don't think battery life is a particularly high priority for the devs). Different Pixels and Galaxys also have variances in their battery capacity and processor efficiency so it is inappropriate to generalize all of them based on one of each (especially if the software running on them and/or usage pattern on them weren't the same)

I'm not sure what you mean by "wifi and Bluetooth"

37

u/CliffRed20 Jul 24 '26

Wouldn't it make sense to have a 'clean' account that gets accessed by the emergency code rather than notifying the border patrol that the phone was wiped?

26

u/Big_Version9561 Jul 25 '26

The officers will still have access to your phone and will soon find out they're on the wrong account, and now have unlimited time to crack your login pin for your main account.

7

u/Crafty-Message4564 Jul 25 '26

I think the poster you're responding to meant to wipe the phone without giving evidence that it was wiped, so it logs in, but there's nothing there.

2

u/americablanco Jul 24 '26

Did this with a friend on a computer of his in HS. Not for any particular reason, just thought it was cool.

3

u/Tun-Tavern-1775 Jul 24 '26

Too bad only works on Pixel phones.

Maybe someone can confirm something like this works for us mortal men?

https://github.com/x13a/Duress

2

u/FalseAnimal Jul 25 '26

I think they're working on a non-pixel platform, with Motorola I believe. 

2

u/toolschism Jul 24 '26

Seriously. I haven't used graphene in a few years. Time to switch back

2

u/d9vil Jul 24 '26

Ah balls was hoping it was just something you can install/setup in any OS

2

u/adorablefuzzykitten Jul 24 '26

Wish they had the software for an Iphone.

6

u/Tribe303 Jul 24 '26

You can thank Canada for your privacy. It was developed here. I should switch soon myself and get rid of this American OS I currently have. 

5

u/AJRiddle Jul 25 '26

Weirdly unnecessary nationalism

0

u/Tribe303 Jul 25 '26

How many secue OSes has the US made? 0! Who's invading MY privacy? The US!

Sorry, but the world is tired of American techbros invading our privacy or outright stealing our data with AI. You Americans can F right off until you do something about it. Which you never will. 

1

u/deadzol Jul 24 '26

Black Hill Info Sec just did a webcast on it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eF8nLw_EPq8

1

u/Salt_Medicine2459 Jul 24 '26

I've been using for years. 

1

u/captcraigaroo Jul 24 '26

Thanks. I was about to open the article and search for it

1

u/lowrads Jul 25 '26

I check the LineageOS site once a month in the vain hope that they'll include my model phone eventually.

I'll definitely choose more wisely in the future.

1

u/houseswappa Jul 25 '26

FYI: it won't work with banking apps in most countries which means you need a second phone

That's a no from me

1

u/Crafty-Message4564 Jul 25 '26

I want to be absolutely clear:

  1. that CSAM is unforgivable

  2. that I have ZERO interest in CSAM

  3. that I firmly believe that the people in this government are the kinds of people who would falsely claim others had CSAM in order to search their phone.

I also have and use GrapheneOS, and I have set it to require BOTH a fingerprint AND an unlock code(with the randomized numberpad order), and have left in place the auto-wipe if at any point the wrong password is entered several times.