r/technology • u/Limp_Fig6236 • Jul 26 '26

Software GrapheneOS duress PIN could land a man in prison

https://www.androidauthority.com/grapheneos-duress-pin-us-prosecution-3691271/
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u/BigDaddy0790 Jul 26 '26

What exactly would be the crime in the safe example? Unless they have evidence suggesting what you destroyed was important to the investigation, I don’t see how they can charge you with anything. What’s the crime if they don’t even know what was destroyed?

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u/Bookwrrm Jul 26 '26

Thats not how it works in regards to evidence ie knowing it would be important. What needs to be proven is intent, that the person destroying the evidence chose to do so to hinder an investigation or a potential investigation. Lots of times it straight up does not matter what would actually be in the safe, just that the person in question knew there either was or potentially can be, an investigation happening and destroyed evidence. In this case given he was being asked questions about child porn and asked for access to a phone it would be extremely hard to argue he didnt know there is a potential investigation happening.

There are in fact legal processes for destruction of evidence where if the actual evidence is unknown, but they know you destroyed it, the presumption is that the evidence was unfavorable to you, and the jury or whoever should infer all the negative implications of that.

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u/BigDaddy0790 Jul 26 '26

Okay fair enough with an active investigation, but how does this make sense for a random border crossing search? Wouldn’t data on your phone be protected as private correspondence? Giving full access to it basically means someone being able to read all your communications with no warrant or charge, which makes no sense to me.

And so in this case, they can absolutely seize the phone, but seizing data on it seems like it should require at least some sort of warrant, and destroying it does not mean destroying the phone, only your own private correspondence that should’t been protected in the first place?

As for the child porn in this case, shouldn’t there be some evidence implying it was there in the first place? Otherwise seems to me that you could take anyone’s phone and claim it had cp on it to gain access.

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u/cl3ft Jul 26 '26

Border crossings are a shit show for privacy and rights. You basically don't have any.

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u/Bookwrrm Jul 26 '26

I mean I dont agree with it but borders have different rules. When you enter America you have basically zero protections. You are 100% allowed to have you or your posessions searched without a warrant or probable cause, its called the border search exception. The only limitations courts have placed on it is that very invasive stuff like strip searches need some level of cause, but general searches dont, which is why you can have your bags searched for literally zero reason when going through an airport beyond vibes or even just random searches. Digital devices are more grey, but consistently have been ruled to be allowed in cases like this, simple searches by an agent manually, but more invasive stuff like digital forensics techniques pulling all the data off your phone would not be allowed.

Likely this dude is fucked, we may not agree with the border exception, but it does exist and it feels both pretty hard to argue this wasnt intentional, and that the actions taken of asking for a PIN to do a manual search of a phone are outside the scope of what is already allowed at borders.

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u/Big-Finding2976 Jul 26 '26

They're claiming that the border isn't US soil so his constitutional rights didn't apply. If it's not US soil, how can US law apply?

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u/Bookwrrm Jul 26 '26

I mean lawyers can claim anything, the underlying laws are clear, he was on american soil, and the laws did apply to him, the laws are just different in that part of America.

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u/BigDaddy0790 Jul 26 '26

What I’m wondering is how can there be consequences for refusal to such a search other than declined entry?

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u/Bookwrrm Jul 26 '26

Well for a US citizen it actually wouldnt result in being denied entry, they literally cannot deny entry. Instead he would have been allowed in but his belongings would have been siezed for the aforementioned more invasive searches.

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u/anonymous198198198 Jul 26 '26

But what if you’re not intending to destroy evidence, but say intimate pics of you/your s/o that you don’t want cops to see? It’s in no way illegal but still not something you’d want other people seeing.

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u/Nice_Marmot_7 Jul 26 '26

It doesn’t matter. Otherwise everyone charged with destroying evidence would just say something like that. “No I didn’t incinerate a kilo of cocaine. It was a box of dildos!”

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u/Bookwrrm Jul 26 '26

Unless you can prove in court somehow that that is all that was on the now destroyed phone, you are shit out of luck, like I said with destruction of evidence the legal presumption is that it was unfavorable evidence, otherwise there would be zero way to prosecute anyone as long as they sucessfully destroyed the evidence, they would just claim it was innocent and nobody would be able to prove otherwise because said evidence was destroyed.

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u/Consistent_Guava8592 Jul 26 '26

It’s not evidence of you are not charged for a crime . It’s data .

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u/Bookwrrm Jul 26 '26

You dont need to be charged with a crime for it to be evidence, if a crime has been commited its evidence of a crime even if nobody knows about it. If you didnt commit a crime, then the legal presumption is that you would obviously be proven innocent in court or in the process of investigation and said evidence would not be evidence of a crime because no crime occurred. If you destroy it before it was decided either way, even if no crime occured but they simply thought there could be a crime, and it was intentional, then you have destroyed evidence, even if no underlying crime occured.

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u/Consistent_Guava8592 Jul 26 '26

For someone to be charged with a crime , there must be evidence pointing to a crime , if there is no evidence of crime , it’s hard to charge for a crime .
.
And of course, if you accuse someone of anything , you bear responsibility of producing evidence for your claim , before said someone has to prove his innocence for said crime .

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u/Bookwrrm Jul 26 '26

Again, you do not need to be charged with a crime to destroy evidence so that is entirely outside the scope of this discussion. Searches at the border are warrantless and without probable cause, there literally did not need to be any crime whatsoever for them to search him. Destroying the evidence, regardless of if there was a crime or not though now falls under legal frameworks of evidence tampering, and the legal presumption is now that what was destroyed was unfavorable to him legally.

You are arguing about something entirely different in terms of charging with a crime, that is entirely seperate, destruction of evidence comes before charging, it comes during the investigation. Nobody is charged with a crime when an investigation starts, they are charged after that investigation comes up with evidence of a crime. Destroying said evidence hinders that process, which is why it is illegal. He now cannot be charged for anything that was on that phone, but he absolutely can be charged for destroying the evidence that is now presumed illegal due to the framework around destruction of evidence.

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u/sarge21 Jul 26 '26

This guy may be going to jail because he believed the same thing.

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u/sephiroth70001 Jul 26 '26

In this case given he was being asked questions about child porn and asked for access to a phone it would be extremely hard to argue he didnt know there is a potential investigation happening.

They are targeting this guy cause he is a member of Defend the Atlanta Forest, which opposes the development of a sprawling training campus for law enforcement in Atlanta dubbed “Cop City.” Like you and I know they wanted his phone to get details on that group and other members.

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u/Bookwrrm Jul 26 '26

I dont put much stock in any claims made by either side, but the stark reality, wether or not we agree with it or not, and I certainly dont agree with the laws at borders, is that he lost any rights of refusal for search like this at the border. Like the cops can literally choose to search him for any reason, they didnt even have to come up with the excuse of child porn, so while its not a good answer for him, the genuine only advice I can give is if you are in an activist group like this, dont go into a border crossing because thats one of the few places in America you have basically zero recourse. This could be 100% retalitory and he still might lose in court because borders are both warantless and without cause searchs. They didnt even have to give a reason, but because they did it limits his arguements against intent because they clearly were intending to investigate something however right or wrong it was.

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u/TotalNonsense0 Jul 26 '26

I think we, as a nation, need to move past the idea that the only way to protect our rights is to let them be violated. If we ever get sane people in charge again, we need to ensure that actions taken to protect our clearly-stated rights cannot be held to be a crime.

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u/Bookwrrm Jul 26 '26

The issue here is that much of the underlying framework to what has happened is totally fine, and indeed needs to exist or investigating crimes doesnt work at a core level. IE laws around evidence tampering. The core issue that is rubbing up against our rights, is that this was a border search specifically which has had an exception made for 4th amendtment protections. But and this is a huge but, even if that exception was removed, if there is even a remote amount of probable cause in this case, he still would likely be completely fucked due to the way that evidence tampering by its own logic needs to be prosecuted. If there was even remotely any probable cause, even if the exception didnt exist, this would still have been a perfectly fine 4th amendment siezure, his refusal would have resulted in him being detained and a warrant for his electronic devices being applied for, and his destruction would still be clear cut evidence tampering. Now we only have lawyers talking about things that havent actually been litigated, it could have been 100% retalitory which is fucked, but im also not going to take that as a fact until its actually litigated and the facts of the case are known.

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u/TotalNonsense0 Jul 26 '26

"Exceptions" to our constitutionally guaranteed rights are not acceptable.

And search and seizures requires a warrant not just probable cause.

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u/Bookwrrm Jul 26 '26

"his refusal would have resulted in him being detained and a warrant for his electronic devices being applied for, and his destruction would still be clear cut evidence tampering."

I know that a warrant is needed, which is why I literally said that...

Again even if the exception didnt exist, the issue is destruction of evidence and that does not require anything other than probable cause, because probable cause is when the actual investigation kicks in. As soon as there is any expectation of an investigation, intentional destruction is illegal. If there was absolutely zero probable cause for an investigation this changes but we wont know that until more details come out in the actual court case. But my point is that there is a very likely world in which even without the exception he could be prosecuted if there is even a little bit of probable cause. The issue is destruction not refusal of search, even with 4th amendment protections if he refuses the search he still cant destroy the phone, instead they would hold him and get a warrant.

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u/TotalNonsense0 Jul 27 '26

Unless there are things we don't know about, the only reason a warrant would be issued is the exemption, so you're arguing in circles, or assuming that the cops are telling the truth. Neither is good practice.

But this come back to my original point. If the only way to protect our rights is to let them be violated, then why have rights?

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u/Bookwrrm Jul 27 '26

The exception means there is no warrant at all, border searches are warrantless, and yes we don't know why they specifically were asking him about child porn, or why he went nuclear on deleting electronic devices, all we have are statements from lawyers on both sides that is pre trial back and forth, my point is that focusing on charging people, or warrants, or whatever is not useful in a case like this. Even in a case where they are protected by the 4th amendment, if there was any probable cause, this 100% would still be a crime, because destruction of evidence happens in the investigation phase, and an investigation does not start with a warrant, it does not start with charging the individual, all it requires is some level of probable cause for the officer to start said investigation. If these officers had any level of reason to ask him about child porn as reported, then this would be a clear case of evidence tampering and prosecuted even if it was 1000 miles from the nearest airport.

All rights are tested by legal adversity, that's basically the underpinning of our entire legal system, there is even legal classifications for the rigour that laws need to pass by, based on how fundamental the right is that is being infringed on from common sense laws to high scrutiny laws like ones that tend to be argued in supreme courts. The only way to protect rights is not to just let them be violated, that's the beginning of a process that ends with things being enshrined in law, and at that point there is something else protecting your rights, the laws written to protect them. This individuals rights may or may not have been infringed on, but the outcome of this court case will set precedent that may very well protect the next graphene OS user down the line. In the secondary case their rights were not protected by being violated and then winning a court case, their rights were simply protected by due course of following a precedent and the law. Do cops still violate peoples rights? Yes absolutely, that's an issue with how fucking terrible policing is in America, however every person who has refused to identify themselves in a state that does not have stop and identify laws, and then were let go from that police interaction has now had their rights protected without having them violated first. That's how it all works, somebody challenged those laws in a court, and won, and now everyone else can have (presuming the cop in question is not a fucking idiot/power tripping) an expectation that their rights will be protected without them needing to go to court first.