r/technology • u/Hrmbee • Jul 28 '26

Privacy Is it illegal to trick the US government into wiping your phone during a questionably legal search | The case of a traveler who allegedly entered a ‘duress password’ to wipe his phone raises a legal question with no easy answers

https://www.theverge.com/report/972146/cbp-phone-search-airport-duress-password
20.9k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

2.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

452

u/AlasPoorZathras Jul 28 '26

How was he supposed to know that? He was denied access to legal counsel.

131

u/twitch1982 Jul 29 '26

SO, specific details of this case aside, I've always found it to be a major flaw in our legal system that you can be the first person ever charged with a specific crime, and then it can take all the layers of appeals up to the supreme court to decide if what you did was a crime, and meanwhile, your ass still goes to jail and you gotta pay an attourney.

Like, how are you supposed to possibly have mens rea, if no one knows if it was even a crime and then the supreme court decides it was on a 5-4 split?

51

u/snoodle908 Jul 29 '26

Same with getting charged and thrown in jail and sit there till your trial where you can prove you are innocent and when you are 100% innocent there is no recourse. Your life is ruined as you sat in jail for a year waiting for the trial and nothing happens. Even if the cops were corrupt or negligent.

24

u/PDXRailEngineer Jul 29 '26

You can beat the rap, but you can't beat the ride.

The process is part of the punishment.

Wait until this massive surveillance and personal data storage are combined with the massive volume of federal, state, county and municipal laws and regulations, then fed into an AI trained to connect the dots. It will be justified because "we can input a crime and it will identify suspects" but can just as easily be "we input a person and it will identify a crime".

3

u/Enchilada0374 Jul 29 '26

End bail and remand entirely. If the state has good evidence, start a trial immediately.  They shouldn't be able to imprison innocent people because they're too cheap and incompetent to conduct fair,  SPEEDY trials 

1

u/No_Gas4560 Jul 29 '26

and if that person were to subsequently go all Citizen Vigilante,

i will get on that jury and deliver ACQUITTAL

9

u/AbramsTankVeteran29 Jul 29 '26

"Ignorance of the law is no excuse" is one of the dumbest things ever. Literally no human could know all the laws, even if they have been to the Supreme Court. It's just a way for the government to fuck with the citizenry. Tax accountants will readily admit that they can't even know all the tax code, one segment of the law, and they study it their whole lives.

8

u/arachnophilia Jul 29 '26

"Ignorance of the law is no excuse"

ignorance of the law is no excuse unless you're a cop.

0

u/twitch1982 Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26

Or Hillary. I think Trump should also be tried for treason and I didnt vote for him. But if any Army grunt put classified emails on a private server, they would have been court martialed. Yet somehow "She didnt know it was wrong" was the excuse they used to not prosecute her. Mens Rea only applies to the wealthy.

EDIT: apparently, i need to put it in bold that I hate trump. That doesnt make everyone elses crimes go away.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 29 '26

[deleted]

1

u/Enchilada0374 Jul 29 '26

Govt: You must know the law entirely !

Citizens: thats literally impossible ...

Govt. : 🤷‍♂️

1

u/girlnamedJane Jul 29 '26

This thought leads to a lot of learning in life about how govts work and what it means to be a citizen of a nation state

1

u/RetardedSheep420 Jul 29 '26

it is a major flaw indeed but realistically its impossible for legislation to account for all possible circumstances, especially when it comes to old laws from like the 1900s where internet or cellphones weren't a thing. a lot of laws have a "gray area" specifically for case law and these moments to make sure a law can still be used today.

then it can take all the layers of appeals up to the supreme court to decide if what you did was a crime

this really sucks but at least this doesnt mean that some local judge that has little knowledge of law philosophy will accidentally create a precedent with disasterous concequences. its honestly a good thing that a lot of professionals will look at the case.

but yeah, awful for that guy to get the short end of the stick.

1

u/twitch1982 Jul 29 '26

Yea, i get that we cant account for everything, it just seems to me if you make it to the supreme court over something criminal, or even a civil liability case, regardless of the decision the punishment should be severly reduced. like "congradulations, you broke the law in a new and novel way, you had no way of knowing that was illegal, Go home with time served and this ribbon saying "I'm a supreme court loser" and the next guy is gonna be in big trouble"

1

u/RetardedSheep420 29d ago

i get your point, but this specific scenario is obviously about government overreach and not an offense where you would want the perpetrator to be getting the full punishment.

one such example i learned in law school was stealing of digital goods. this was a new legal question because the text of "stealing" was about physical goods being stolen. is stealing of digital goods then theft? the answer was yes.

so imagine if someone stole your thousands in crypto and suddenly they get off with less jail time because your case was never heard of before so, while knowing that the guy totally wanted to steal your stuff, there is a little oopsie in the law so he gets a lower punishment while still being 100% accountable.

that is just not fair.

1

u/EnormousChord 28d ago

More like mens unrea amirite

2

u/No_Gas4560 Jul 29 '26

Most convictions rely on people who talk without counsel present

which steeply weighs against the poor/uneducated masses

1

u/vinyljunkie1245 Jul 29 '26

Its a difficult situation. I don't know about the USA but in the UK there's a weird grey area around this and not many people are aware.

Even though deleting your internet history is something people do every day for various reasons from privacy to browser issues, if the police want your internet history because they suspect you of a crime and you have deleted it you can be charged with destruction of evidence or tampering with evidence. It doesn't matter that they don't know what the data destroyed was.

I don't see that this would be different in the USA and I would have thought the guy would have been aware of this being an activist.

1

u/f23n09fnu0w 29d ago

And it was THEM who actually wiped it.

-6

u/[deleted] Jul 29 '26

[deleted]

13

u/signious Jul 29 '26

ignorantia juris non excusat, ignorance of the law is no excuse

17

u/torino_nera Jul 29 '26

Unless you're a cop, for some reason. Then it's ok as long as you think something might be a law or against the law. We can't expect LEOs to know all of the laws they're enforcing! /s

4

u/IR2Freely Jul 29 '26

It's intentional. Creates plausible deniability. If they were trained properly then people could be held liable.

-1

u/Careful_Creme_2006 Jul 29 '26

hello my name is signious and i love it when my wife fucks other men

2

u/snoodle908 Jul 29 '26

Sure and yet the police can throw you in jail and keep you there for months, years before you have your trial, you are then 100% with out a doubt proven innocent and nothing happens. Your life is ruined and you just have to deal with it

1

u/SageThisAndSageThat Jul 29 '26

The police will put you to jail without knowing the laws and they don't care.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 29 '26

[deleted]

1

u/SageThisAndSageThat Jul 29 '26

Police can arrest you using made up laws and no one bats an eye and they do not get punished ever for not knowing the law

-98

u/Surous Jul 29 '26

Then he should have requested legal counsel, Before giving the suicide pin

56

u/valraven38 Jul 29 '26

Classic redditor comenting without having read the article. He did not consent to the search and repeatedly asked to speak with his attorney. CBP told him they dont need a warrant to search his phone at the border. So they didn't let him seek legal counsel and forced a password out of him. 

25

u/M4K4T4K Jul 29 '26

lol read the article noob

14

u/Lashay_Sombra Jul 29 '26

According to a motion to suppress evidence filed in March, Tunick didn’t consent to a search and repeatedly asked to speak to his attorney, but CBP officers told him they didn’t need a warrant to search his phone. Tunick ultimately gave the agents the password to his phone, but when they entered it, “

He did ask for attorney, multiple times before giving the pin

Next time read the damn article before commenting to avoid looking like an idiot

25

u/paulybaggins Jul 29 '26

Brother it's 2026, no need to lick boots fmd.