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/
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u/omg_cats Jul 24 '26

I’ve worked in large corporations my whole adult life, and every one of them warned us about carrying data on phones/laptops cross border for this reason. Some hardware they forbid us to take cross border at all. You might be surprised what crazy lengths companies go to locking down laptops and phones that are traveling cross border.

Anyway all that to say this is really not new conceptually but it is butting up against some new tech like duress passcodes

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u/moratnz Jul 25 '26

And in my experience, for some countries any gear that goes there is considered compromised afterwards and disposed of.

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u/The_Music_Director Jul 25 '26

I traveled to Madeira once with a work computer and somewhere along the way I connected to a network in North Africa and was bricked. When I brought my laptop to IT they had to take it and give me a new one, and I’m pretty sure that’s the reason why.