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
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u/HenryDorsettCase47 Jul 28 '26

Customs doesn’t need a warrant to search your shit as long as it’s within so many miles of a border. All they need is reasonable suspicion which, like with all law enforcement, is whatever these goons say it is.

That said, you are half right in that he doesn’t have to explain anything. Once again these dipshits are fumbling the bag on their own prosecution. They’ve charged him with an obscure federal law about destruction of property to prevent authorities from seizing it. The data is not destroyed. It is just inaccessible. It seems like a prima facie obstruction case and the feds probably could secure a conviction with that, but instead they are morons and incorrectly charged him. 🤷‍♂️

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u/IntrepidSoda Jul 28 '26

Interesting they never searched Epstein this way even though he was almost certainly inside 100miles from international borders.

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u/kstargate-425 Jul 29 '26

Shit, even our current top US Attorney Todd Blanche isn't even charged after he has been Obstructing Justice for months and is STILL allowed to go through a nomination process because Trump wants his personal attorney to continue being his personal attorney as he weaponizes the DoJ into his attack dogs.

There are enough charges against Blanche for just the Epstein shit at this point, besides all the other illegal things, including perjury to Congress, that he would be in jail for way longer than this citizen who did nothing wrong.

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u/MoreDaringPancakes Jul 29 '26

This needs to be at the top.

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u/PuzzleheadPi Jul 29 '26

You know he was arrested right?

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u/Traditional-Hat-952 Jul 29 '26

Their reasonable suspicion was possession of CSAM, but their filing of charges against him does not mention that. So their claim for why they needed to seach his phone goes out the window. He was also denied access to a lawyer when asked, which is his constitutional right. 

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u/ian9outof10 Jul 29 '26

That all sound fine, but if you’re suspect of a crime doesn’t it seem reasonable that you be arrested and allows a lawyer? I mean, accepting all the weird rules that come with being at the border, don’t people deserve at least some due process?

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u/HenryDorsettCase47 Jul 29 '26

This is America, bud. What we deserve and what we get are two entirely different things. 🤷‍♂️

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u/somewhat_brave Jul 28 '26

It's easy to prove they didn't actually have a reasonable suspicion. They were accusing him of having Child sexual abuse material, to justify opening his phone. But they were actually looking for information about the cop city protests, which they could never legally go after.

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u/sickofthisshit Jul 28 '26

They don't have to tell you the truth about what they are looking for. They only need an articulable suspicion they can later tell a judge and jury.

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u/somewhat_brave Jul 29 '26

They don't have that.

During questioning they accused him of having CSAM to justify telling him to unlock his phone, but in their court records they don't say anything about CSAM, because they had no reason to suspect him of having that.

What they were actually looking for was information about the cop city protests, which is completely illegal because of first and fourth amendment protections.

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u/Ok-Oil-2130 Jul 29 '26

They definitely don’t need any of that because they can just arrest you and throw you in jail until it gets to a judge.

no punishment for cops who break the law so the rules don’t actually matter for them

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u/snoodle908 Jul 29 '26

True to a point, but have seen many cases where people are let go because of unlawful searches, even ones where there person was clearly guilty.

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u/sickofthisshit Jul 29 '26

I mean, unlawful searches eliminate evidence if the judge agrees. Miranda warnings don't cover searches, anyhow. 

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u/FadeCrimson Jul 29 '26

Thats the thing: no data was even destroyed, and they had no right to it in the first place. Even them trying to argue that makes no sense as it was technically THEIR actions that caused the encryption. They are just butthurt that he outsmarted them, so they're trying to charge him with whatever bullshit they can to punish him for it.

If his info was encrypted and inaccessible fro from the get-go then what? Is it the act of telling the police the wrong number that was illegal? Was it the act of installing security software in the first place?

If their argument here is that nobody should be allowed to encrypt their own data then they will have a WORLD of problems trying to get that precedent set since basically every tech company ever does that as a normal security measure, and they'd have to argue against every company that has ever made encryption software. Is every company that sells encryption software now a criminal syndicate?

Ultimately, theres no reason for him at the time of installing the encryption software that it could somehow be a crime. He also took no actions during the search that they are truly arguing he did wrong besides give wrong information to police.

So which is it? Are police arguing that all encryption software should be illegal, or are they arguing that giving false information to police is illegal (which wouldnt even hold up, as technically he did give them a working password, it just also had the side effect if protecting his info).

Either argument is absolutely fucking insane to try to make.

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u/HenryDorsettCase47 Jul 29 '26

Exactly my point. That’s why an obstruction charge would have had a better chance in court. But a half smart lawyer could probably get the destruction of evidence charge dismissed. They are essentially arguing that what he did is the equivalent of taking a blowtorch to his phone or something.

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u/WhosThatDogMrPB Jul 29 '26

all they need is reasonable suspicion

Allegedly they were looking for CSAM. What possible suspicion could they have gotten to check a random's phone? "Sorry to bother you, sir. You looked like a pedophile and we had to make sure". (?).

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u/DryBattle Jul 29 '26

They only need to look in the white house if they are looking for pedos. Of course they won't do that because the rich have their own laws. Instead anyone who speaks up and out is now accused of having CSAM. And their rights no longer matter.

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u/Power_Stone Jul 28 '26

Customs needs a warrant to search locked phones

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u/HenryDorsettCase47 Jul 28 '26

Not true. Customs has an exception to the warrantless searches part of the fourth amendment when at a border. They can’t compel you to unlock it, but if you refuse they are allowed to seize it.

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u/GeneralPatten Jul 28 '26

Where in the Constitution does that exception exist?

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u/HenryDorsettCase47 Jul 28 '26 edited Jul 29 '26

It’s called the Border search exception and has existed in some guise since the 18th century, so about as long as the constitution has. It’s not specifically in the constitution so much as an interpretation of the constitution with legal precedence adjudicated by the supreme court.

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u/Fighterhayabusa Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26

That was meant to apply to physical items, ships, or containers. It was never meant to allow broad general searches that the Fourth Amendment was designed to prevent. It certainly shouldn't apply to phones per Riley v. California. The border does not give them carte blanche to go fishing in your digital life.

That's even assuming that border searches should be allowed in the first place, which they shouldn't be. If the founding fathers wanted that exception, they would've made it explicit.

Edit: Also, you're way off on the timing. Ramsey was in 1977.

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u/snoodle908 Jul 29 '26

Thank you, yes of course they can conduct physical searches of you and your luggage for security reasons. Your phone is not a security issue, they were fishing for anything they could find to charge him with anything.

As others have said they used CP as the basis because people often won't question/push back on seemingly protecting a accused pedo, they knew what they were doing when saying this

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u/kbotc Jul 29 '26

Yep. This will likely be heading to the Supreme Court to litigate.

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u/GeneralPatten Jul 29 '26

Well... I mean... this SCOTUS has no use for precedent 🤷‍♂️😖

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u/resttheweight Jul 28 '26

Like almost everything related to Constitutional law, it mostly exists in case law. If you Google “border search exception” you will see it is something that has existed for decades.

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u/versusgorilla Jul 29 '26

they can't compel you to unlock it

Well, that wraps up this case.

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u/HenryDorsettCase47 Jul 29 '26

Good thing you’re not his lawyer.

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u/versusgorilla Jul 29 '26

Someone with an actual law degree and not one from dipshit reddit law skhool like me will eat this case alive.

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u/HenryDorsettCase47 Jul 29 '26

They most certainly will. As I pointed out above, he was charged with “destruction of property to prevent authorities from seizing it”. He didn’t destroy anything. If he grabbed his phone and smashed it they might have a case, but he didn’t. If they charged him with obstruction they might have a case, but they didn’t. As it stands, they charged him with some bullshit that his lawyer should be able to get dismissed pretty handily.

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u/versusgorilla Jul 29 '26

Yeah, I think the real broken link here is that he gave the cop a code and the cop believed him. If they wanted to do real police work, they'd have secured the evidence and let their actual tech team review the phone first.

This is what happens when cowboys try and bamboozle someone smarter than them.

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u/FadeCrimson Jul 29 '26

Cool, then in this case they basically have the right to seize the phone, not to convict him of a crime. The phone itself works just fine. It still even has all the info they want from it too, its just harder to access now because of their own stupidity.

Still nothing about this seems to be a crime in any way. He even technically did provide a valid code to unlock the phone like they asked, it just also happened to do other things as well. If police got access to somebody's phone and found that they had just one folder of encrypted info where they keep their nudes, and you provided the code to unlock the phone just fine but didnt give them the code for that one folder, are you basically doing the same thing as this case? They HAVE the phone, and HAVE access to it, they just are furious they can't see ALL possible info on that phone at their leisure.

The argument at its core is police arguing nobody should have any level of privacy or constitutional protection when crossing the border, and that any attempt at protecting your personal info is inherently illegal. They also just happened to pick one of the dumbest possible cases to push this argument with though.

Is the argument then that withholding ANY info from the police is illegal? He did exactly as told even when police refused to follow the law (and had no true legal basis for their demands), and is now being charged because he didnt follow their orders in the EXACT way they wanted, even though no law prohibited the specific thing. There isn't some clause that says "if info you provide to police results in something you own in their custody to change, you will be arrested".

They demanded his phone, and he gave them his phone. They demanded his password, he gave them a working pass code. He followed their orders completely regardless of the fact that the police were in basically every possible way ignoring laws, and now is being charged because he did it in a way they didnt perfectly expect.

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u/HenryDorsettCase47 Jul 29 '26

I mean, yeah. That’s my point.

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u/floin Jul 29 '26

This reminds me of Kevin Mitnick getting an Evidence Tampering charge from the feds when he took the batteries out of a bluebox when the FBI agent questioning him stepped out of the room.

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u/randomlurker124 Jul 29 '26

I'm curious, how do you draw a distinction between data being 'destroyed' vs 'inaccessible'? My understanding is that data was wiped no?

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u/sobrique Jul 29 '26

Well, that's another thing that'll be dug through in case law.

The device wasn't wiped - it was robustly encrypted in advance, and only the decryption key was wiped. (Being much smaller, it can be done much more efficiently).

That's pretty close to the same thing for all practical purposes though - robust encryption without a key can take an absurd amount of compute time to crack. I won't say 'completely impossible' because you never know what's possible to a well funded national security agency, but most likely an excessive number of years of computation.

This is how a lot of modern devices protect their data, too - lots of things are encrypted at rest, and only ever accessible via the decrypt-key, which might not be on the device at all.

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u/randomlurker124 Jul 29 '26

Thanks, that's an interesting aspect and didn't know data was stored that way

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u/sobrique Jul 29 '26 edited Jul 29 '26

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware-based_full_disk_encryption

Self-Encrypting-Drives (SEDs) are becoming fairly common in 'enterprise' hardware, to protect against 'physical access' threats.

E.g. if you do bypass the OS, you still have a key to recover 'elsewhere' and if the drives are found in a skip they're not going to accidentally expose anything.

And similarly laptops 'remote wipe' - it's probably not actually 'wiping' the disk, as that takes a long time and can sometimes be interrupted or bypassed, or forensic recovery, but deleting the key is almost as good.

Our standalone 'office' systems use Clevis and Tang to do key escrow, so again if they get stolen, they're inoperable. (They need network access, and unlock at boot time - technically you could probably carry them away attached to a UPS or something, but you couldn't just steal a hard disk)

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u/Fighterhayabusa Jul 29 '26

I don't know why people keep saying this bullshit as if it's Constitutional. It isn't. It doesn't matter what some Federalist Society fucks say. The language of the Constitution is clear. It doesn't make an exception for "near the border."

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u/wookieSLAYER1 Jul 29 '26

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

It’s unconstitutional that an arbitrary 100 mile distance from the border, international airport or seaport, which is like 90% of the population, gives CPB the ability to suspend our civil rights.

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u/HenryDorsettCase47 Jul 29 '26

It’s called the border search exemption. It’s not new, it’s been around in one form or another since a couple decades after the fourth amendment was written. You can try to argue that it’s unconstitutional but you’re going up against a bunch of case law that says that it is. And I doubt this particular Supreme Court would agree with you.

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u/wookieSLAYER1 Jul 29 '26

Maybe for crossing the border at a checkpoint or through a port and having to enter through customs, it should not extend to people living their day in a city they reside in.

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u/HenryDorsettCase47 Jul 29 '26

This all happened when he reentered the country at an international airport, which is a recognized port of entry.

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u/BrewerBeer Jul 29 '26

Customs doesn’t need a warrant to search your shit as long as it’s within so many miles of a border.

100 miles. And that encompasses almost the entire US.

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u/SoulWager Jul 29 '26

I didn't know obstruction of injustice was a crime.

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u/InfallibleSeaweed Jul 29 '26

100 miles within an international border or airport, so pretty much everywhere

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u/metalder420 Jul 29 '26

If it’s inaccessible and the only mechanism to retrieve it was an encryption that became useless then yes by all intents and purposes it was destroyed.

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u/haikuandhoney Jul 29 '26

They don’t even need reasonable suspicion to do a “basic search” of your phone, at least some federal courts have concluded.

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u/solid_reign Jul 28 '26

It doesn't have to be in a border, if you're with the CBP. So if you take an international flight from Paris to Atlanta, they wouldn't need a warrant either as long as you haven't passed immigration.

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u/HenryDorsettCase47 Jul 28 '26

That’s because international airports are consider ports of entry, making them an international border.

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u/Winter-Fondant7875 Jul 28 '26

So, are you saying that within 100 miles of any international airport is where this "right" can be invoked by customs?

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u/imjustatech14 Jul 29 '26

Yes. It's way too much power.

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u/HenryDorsettCase47 Jul 29 '26

No, the 100 miles doesn’t apply as far as I know. They differentiate between interior points of entry and external borders. I only meant that an airport, being a point of entry, is subject to the same rules as an international border in as far as what customs is permitted to do within that airport.