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That's a misconception. Border/immigration agents can operate inside this zone, including making stops with reasonable suspicion or running checkpoints where everyone is stopped with no suspicion. The checkpoints are limited in scope, and do not provide authority for searching electronic devices. Some people, including a couple dissenting supreme court justices do feel the checkpoint part violates the constitution.
That's distinct from the border search exemption, which allows inspection of everyone and everything crossing the border. It only exists when someone is actually crossing the border and does not allow CBP to stop or search people who are not crossing the border.
Edit: https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/border-zone
Fun fact. Lack of parking is not a legitimate reason to attempt to drive past this region. I was once flagged crossing into canada on a day they were interviewing a lot of travelers. I spotted parking in what looked to me like an overflow lot on the other side of a fence, and when I slowly drove that direction sirens blasted and guns were drawn. Nothing gives you clarity like a gun pointed at you.
If there was a strip of land where you are not in a country then how can CBP assert any authority? No, you must be in America. There is no "no man's land," and there is no such thing as "international land" at America's borders where no law exists.
Seems like so far it didn't create any problems, so public is ok with that.
From Chief Justice Roberts in Riley v. California: "One of the most notable distinguishing features of modern cell phones is their immense storage capacity. Before cell phones, a search of a person was limited by physical realities and tended as a general matter to constitute only a narrow intrusion on privacy."
which is a good reminder for anyone with reason to be concerned about this sort of thing to turn off biometric/face id/etc. access to their devices.
unless the phone itself is a suspicious good, there should never be any justification for a border officer to demand visibility of the contents of the phone, or the data that its permitted to access on other systems.
I presume the counter to this is that they must be able to examine the socials in order to see if you should 'death to america' on message boards. is that really an important vector? is the balance of that security concern versus speech rights (which are supposed to be 'universal') something we want individual field officers to decide?
We should consider using that process! Surely things have changed enough in the last half a century to justify a new amendment or three.
The problem has become acute now that the SCOTUS majority has arrogated power to itself in shameless and corrupt fashion.
That is actually not so good. First, all constitutions that I know of have a process of change, e.g. 2/3 majority in parliament, or in 2 houses or something. And note that I wrote "change", not "amend". The idea that one can only add things to a constitution is weird one --- but then again, I'm european and don't know the US constitution correctly, maybe the amendments delete outdated paragraphs?
But still, a process of change junk you wrote earlier is hardly "thoughtful", it's just natural.
However, in reality the US constitution sucked, and continues to suck. US people claim they are the epitome of freedom, but yet they were for hundreds of years the epitome of slavery. Or of genocide to native tribe (look up "Trail of Tears").
They claim they are the epitome of democracy, and yet they basically have only a 2-party system cemented in stone, with no fresh air ever. But even worse: there are so many cases of gerrymandering in the US --- a clear anti-democratic way of organizing elections --- and yet the oh-so-democratic constitution hasn't an answer to this. No way to give back real election power to the people.
The the US, elected people with stamina can hinder a democratic process by filibustering, nothing that we know of sane countries.
Apropos sane: have you heard about "government shutdown" of e.g. France, Sweden or Poland? That doesn't exist there. It's a laughing stock to some of us. Seems like a hefty wart in the US system, I personally wouldn't like to be some government employed person with the insecurity of "Do I get my money next month?". Not 100% sure, but perhaps this shutdown is a function of the US constitution?
The rest of the US justice system isn't particular good either. That's not exactly constitution, but usually the constitution sets the basis on how and where the laws work. The US congress these days creates massive 2000 pages long laws no can read or understand. The US has the highest incarceration rate of the western world and STILL one of the highest crime rates. The US police forces alone kills more people each year than the total number of people killed by guns in Germany by police and criminals combined. Before court, not all people are equal, the people with deep pockets are equaller. Or look how a drug company and medical doctors made lots of US citizens drug addicts. And it took many, many years to reduce the issue ... and the law system had no answer for this. Which CEO or CFO went to jail, for example? Which GP went to jail for addicting his patients, lost his license?
These days, even the balance of power is in jeopardy, and the US constitution again has no answer to this.
To me, I'd say the situation in the US justifies a rewrite of the constitution to something modern, and than a general election on this new constitution. Get rid of the old rubbish, it showed that it has many, very many, grave problems.
But again, I'm from europe and am therefore not so deep into your things ...
Because they had direct experience with tyranny and exploitation, and documented their response to that in the US founding documents. We care because if you don't learn from history, you're doomed to repeat it. Which is pretty much what's happening right now.
Anyway, you don't have to look back to the founding fathers. Go back to 1930's Germany and you can see all the parallels you want, much closer to today's situation and in a much more modern and relevant context.
What are you even talking about?
Obviously grafeneOS has no liability. But the owner of the device didn’t take the action to remove the data, the CBP officer entered it. We already have some precedent around being forced to give up your password.
How does that change if you are forced to give up a password that is destructive? What if the password works fine at home and the same password does a wipe based on location? Either way, the user complied, and did not take action to wipe their device.
wiping the device before carrying it across the border seems essentially identical to me. like, saying "you can't wipe it when searched" would also imply "you can't have an empty device when crossing because it may have been wiped before the search to avoid having your data searched" since people can (and often do) do that for exactly that reason.
that may very well be what they want / what they are trying to legally allow during searches, but it also seems like it'd raise a hell of a lot more outrage. it's essentially claiming all citizens are under full legal hold all the time, if they ever intend to leave the country for any length of time.
Beyond this, “I dropped my phone in the ocean” is always a perfectly valid reason.
If you’re a foreigner and they already suspect you of something, they can deny you entry for any reason. It may be better to be denied than arrested!
And this policy is already accepted in practice.
On the contrary, there is a huge gulf between these. Providing a fake password that wipes a device while under active questioning is a clear case of providing false testimony. Lying to the police while under investigation is simply illegal, regardless of the thing you're lying about.
By contrast, entering the country with a clear device is not a crime under any possible interpretation that I can see. Now, if you are wiping evidence while you know there is an active investigation against you, that may be a crime as well, but it's a completely separate crime and can't be easily judged by an officer that simply finds you with a clean phone.
Theoretically yes, but in this case there's approximately zero chance a judge would accept "I destroyed evidence because there's a vague chance ICE might send me to a deportation camp".
i pray that sense doesnt erode
The owner of the phone doesn't know that. They have no control over or insight into the officer's brain to know what they'll do. The officer might suspect the phone-wiping functionality exists and decide not to enter the password. If we start talking about ultimate causes then judicial matters become infinitely complex. What immediately caused the phone being wiped is the wrong password being entered by the officer.
Fed: "give us your PIN or else"
me: "528491"
Fed: <types 528491, presses OK>
me: "no! 528419, I meant 528419!!"
Fed: <watches phone wipe...>
>"ok are you sure that's your pin?"
>they exit the room and come back 5 min later
>"that pin didn't work, can you write it again?"
You're going to have a hard time convincing the judge that you "accidentally" gave the wrong pin in this case.
Since 4th ammendemnt protections are significantly curtailed at border crossings, they can actually declare on the spot that your data is now their data. The only thing they can't do is force you to tell them how to access it - but, if they can hack your password, they actually have the right to search your phone just as much as they have the right to search you luggage.
I don't see why this would be any different.
Could you be charged with destruction of evidence?
IANAL but I expect it depends on whether someone thinks they can prove your intent was specifically to disrupt a (legitimate) search.
To recycle a comment from 2 days ago, regarding why one might reasonably have the duress code written on the phone:
> "Your honor, I have the real pin memorized because I use it all the time, but since I can never use the duress code, I had to keep it somewhere handy."
> Or
> "Pickpocketing and phone-snatching is a real problem overseas, I put it there so that criminal would wipe the phone trying to get in, denying them access to things like my bank account."
> Heck, those aren't just plausible, they might be a good idea.
I know everyone's situation is different, but it is regardless good to keep in mind one is writing a code on their device which will wipe said device, while also intentionally looking similar to a code that would unlock it instead.
The user claimed to offer a password to access the contents of the device, and instead offered a password that deleted the device. That is false testimony / lying to an investigation, and is almost certainly punishable in itself.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_person
On the other hand, I'm worried that the publicity will only make explicit targets out of GrapheneOS users, and that you would only be using it "if you have something to hide".
With this publicity and the coming Motorola phones, there's reason to be at least a little optimistic.
It's a pity Americans must learn empirically rather than from history books how fascism operates.
"Give us the PIN for your phone"
"I don't want you to search my phone, and I want to talk to my lawyer"
"If you don't comply, you're going to be in a lot of trouble"
"Can I please just go, I don't want to answer questions or be searched"
"If you don't comply we will seize your phone and detain you indefinitely until we can unlock your phone!"
"I want my lawyer."
"Just tell us the PIN and you'll be on your way. Otherwise it's gonna be bad."
"Look if I have no choice my PIN is 1234, but I don't want you searching my phone without my lawyer present."
...
"Hey! We tried to search your phone and the phone wiped itself! You're going to prison for destruction of evidence!"
A duress password isn't a booby trap. Nothing was damaged except for the fragile egos of the man-children who weren't able to bully someone into giving up their wrong-think.
However, did that evidence really exist? And if it did, was it for something else? Perhaps, the guy just worried about something far more mundane being discovered? We shall never know.
Think Schrodinger's password.
Courts have been fairly tolerant of law enforcement using pretexts like that to expand their powers.
That seems to be along the lines of what they're arguing here - they wanted to perform an ostensibly legal search, and he destroyed everything that might have been evidence either way. It would be like a corporation getting an e-mail from the SEC saying "Give us all the communications your company has had about these three stocks" and the company saying "Oops someone erased our e-mail server so I guess we don't have any communications about that."
If you're this paranoid about being searched, or you have something to hide (even if that 'something' is a sense of morality and a desire for a free and just society), wipe your phone before you cross the border and not during. Put some basic apps on (reddit, twitter, etc), leave them logged out or put them on some empty account and tell them you're not a big social media guy or you're on a digital cleanse or something. Wiping your phone when you're being detained by law enforcement is a bad look one way or the other.
https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2082153517234676150#m
forensics will reveal the other partition(s), and then you're in the exact same position having to answer "what's the other partition, provide the password"
I'm not taking sides here, I just wanted to make that clear.
And you should understand that they can lie to you. That's OK and legal, but you cannot lie to them.
But if an officer gets a confession by saying, "They just passed an amendment, and you don't have the right to a lawyer anymore, so you have to answer my question or I'll send you to a torture dungeon", that is a lie that can harm anyone, regardless of guilt.
In Belarus, such "search" means plugging a USB cable and downloading everything from your phone AND connected clouds (Google Photos, iCloud etc). Then their software (bought for millions of dollars from a foreign security company) compares every single face in your photos/videos with every single face gov has in their database. And you don't have control of the downloaded data.
And ongoing publicity as the trial happens.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phantom_Secure#Law_enforcement...
When I was designing my secure vault app for iOS[0], my approach was to make one of the “folders” (I call them vaults), to trigger the wipe out without any sign of doing so while retaining the data in the opened vault. It technically only deletes the index and the keys, and obfuscates them by replacing them with random bytes.
I already heard from a person that was forced to open their app but was let go, because they complied.
[0] https://vaultaire.app/
Duress hidden profiles viability statement:
https://xcancel.com/GrapheneOS/status/2082153517234676150#m
Regular defenses statement:
https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/40700-grapheneos-protection...
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49055169
Not clear on anything else regarding the duress PIN but I don’t think a 5th defense would apply.
Note that you apparently have to explicitly invoke your right to remain silent or your silence could be implied as an admission of guilt (thanks to Salinas v. Texas). I imagine you’d have to repeat your assertion multiple times, and the person demanding the PIN will tell you that you can’t use the 5th, will threaten you with arrest and additional charges, etc. Consult a lawyer and get training if you’re doing critical work where you may need this defense.
As I mentioned earlier, this is part of why my own plans for international travel are to only go with a notebook/sheet with contact numbers and buy throwaway devices on the other side. I don't think I'd travel internationally with a phone or laptop at this point, and that's kind of been my thoughts for a while. Especially given the direction that many countries, not just the US have taken. For that matter, I don't think I'd ever even risk travelling to the UK or China at this point. Not that I like the surveillance state here in the US, at least I still have some rights preserved.
Compelling a PIN, even with a warrant, is legally questionable. Courts have held that it is a form of 'testimony' because it's compelling you to disclose something you know, while some state courts have ruled the opposite way.
In all likelihood the government wouldn't push it in this instance, to avoid creating any sort of precedent.
As such in a case like the Salinas one, being silent or "pleading the fifth" would be moot as both would just indicate "deafening silence" to the judges since the defendant had been cooperative up until that point.
(the Swedish judicial system has no juries, instead there's a professionally learned judge and 2 "laymen judges" appointed from political parties acting as the peoples representatives, if that triumvirate fucks up, higher courts can and often will kick rulings back down for retrials).
TBF, similar mindset if I ever attend defcon, etc. as well.
I currently fly to the USA through Canada and if CBP ever insists on seeing my phone I will revoke my application to enter and accept that Im most likely banned from entry for a while.
We published a technical overview of how GrapheneOS protects against data extraction covering the major protections it adds:
https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/40700-grapheneos-protection...
US Government targets Cop City protester over phone operating system
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49024436
Now, is this what's at stake here? Evidence of what? Surely at some point, clear allegations need to me made for which the content of the phone is evidence for.
There's alot of speculation of what the indicted person was involved in, or motives of the border agents. Or the insinuation that the tooling that allowed the alleged destruction of evidence is (or should be) ilegal or indications of nefarious intent by those who use such tools. This is all BS.
Am I missing something?
Then when in travel, and about to pass a border, you enter that selective mode. You can enter a different password as the proxy to unlock the phone in this bare minimal data mode. The agents can access it, etc but wont have all the data. That data shouldn't even be visible in the OS, and if they try to copy the hard drive they will get encrypted data in the other blocks.
You still legally comply with orders and unlock the phone but the other partitions don't unlock/decrypt unless you specifically unlock them.