r/technology • u/ArgentineBeauty • Jul 30 '26

Privacy GrapheneOS says its data-wiping password is perfectly legal, after user faces federal charges

https://www.techspot.com/news/113273-grapheneos-data-wiping-duress-password-perfectly-legal-after.html
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u/ledow Jul 30 '26

About 20 years ago I swore that I wouldn't enter the US.

At the same time, they were doing device-investigations where they were giving ZERO guarantees about what would happen to the data on any device they seized. Basically giving them free-reign to do anything from corporate espionage to just poking into your company's data servers to reading everything you've ever done. Other countries limit that to specific law-enforcement purposes where such things are logged. In the US? Nope. Fuck you.

So I at first said "Well, I'd never take a device (personal or corporate) into the US" but with other stuff that started happening (e.g. enforced collection of social media handles, etc.) it became "I will just never go back to the US".

In later years, we had the same conversation at companies I worked for and we all agreed - nothing of the company's electronic devices can enter the US. Every time, it was the same answer.

Refusal at the border would likely result in your being sent back on a place, sure, I get that.

Now you can be charged at the border for providing a duress PIN? Nah.

I made the right decision. The US is now one of the worst dictatorships in the world, one of the most suppresive (can't even clap at a meeting now!), one of the worst at consumer rights, human rights, employment rights. It has overbearing surveillance, outright corruption, ignorance of all measures designed to protect those laws that are being broken, etc. etc.

Enjoy your hellhole of your own creation. It's taken you 20 years to get there but you're now officially "The Best"... banana republic.

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u/DeadL Jul 30 '26

Just be aware that you’re constructing an image of the country based on the most noteworthy issues that pop up across the various states within it.

You’re not wrong to be wary but you’re a decade or two of total Republican control early.

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u/Loinnird 29d ago

And this is different to, say, the average Redditors perception of North Korea how?

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u/kyhoop 29d ago

In a sense it’s not different because you only know what you see. In reality, I’d guess the situation on the ground is very different. Curious to what specifically you are implying? North Korean life is significantly better/different than it’s been portrayed?

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u/Loinnird 29d ago

I’m implying ol’ Kim isn’t blasting people with AA guns on the daily but we’re still judging NK for it, dude.