And that person is the prison officer that destroyed the evidence
You have to carry a piece of paper in your wallet that contains a PIN. The piece of paper contains no further information, just a PIN. You decline to answer any questions regarding this piece of paper or your phone’s PIN.
This might not be a good idea, depending on your jurisdiction.
Or just set it to your mmddyy or something typical for weak passwords
You can have a business card with a "phone"number on it. (Your pin can be any part of that number it is only you who needs to know where to start reading the code). You don’t need to have a sus number only piece of paper. :)
I’m not going to disclose my specific way, but numbers don’t need decimal digits to be expressed and parsed. An hypothetical example:
Oh… ye shadow! Nahamah, my Mother
Believe it or not, this is encoding the today’s date, 2026-07-26.
Oh = 2 letters
Elipsis = no letters, so 0
ye = 2 letters
shadow = 6 lettersNahamah = 7
My = 2
Mother = 6The funny part? I just conjured this technique during the composition of this very reply. It’s somehow easy for me to conjure atypical steganographic techniques, and I use steganography quite often IRL. In this way, I can literally write down my passwords and keep in my wallet, and absolutely nobody will get to figure out it’s meant to be a password.
Luckily for FBI and other investigation agencies, I dont even think of visiting the USA, but good luck for any fed or cop trying to keep up with my plethora of steganographic techniques (and my neurodivergent brain) amidst plausible deniability if I ever did. Lol
Name one thing that can’t land you in prison in the US. I’ll wait.
pedophilia (if you are rich)
Even convicted pedo can avoid prison https://www.cnn.com/2014/04/02/justice/delaware-du-pont-rape-case
Indirectly murdering hundreds of thousands of people in pursuit of profits.
Got me there
With the caveat that, if you don’t achieve those profits, it will land you in jail.
Being white
For profit slave labor prisons are very lucrative I hear
Seems like what’s needed is the ability to load an alternate profile or some kind of demo mode based on the pin. Something that looks normal but doesn’t have any info you don’t want others to see, without actually deleting anything.
Dont think that would be as secure. Once a phone has been unlocked after reboot, even if it has been locked again, the operating system and ram can be accessed quite easily with the correct tools and border controls have those tools.
Even a Graphene phone is only properly secure before first unlock after reboot. So i would not personally rely on allowing acess to any profile. I would assume its possible, (probably trivial) to gain complete access from there.
Any duress pin use should be covered under a person’s right to avoid self incrimination.
If the phone is owned by your employer and they are the investigation target, then you might be on dodgy ground.
I had this feature on a Xiaomi phone that i had a few years ago. I could even set up the fingerprint reader to open a different profile depending on which finger i used.
Sounds awesome.
Or loads a dummy profile and deletes other profiles without giving away what is happening.
Alternately, a user profile that isn’t displayed anywhere, but accessible only through a specific PIN, maybe. Not sure how you’d explain the storage space either option used, however.
It should work like truecrypt used to where there’s no sign some of the encrypted blob is not actually visible in the fake os.
I think the point is that if you load an empty profile (no photos, no videos, no apps, etc) but your phone storage is nearly full, it could throw up a red flag.
Supreme court has ruled that warrantless phone search at the border is bogus, but theyre too shitpantsed to stick with it
they are evil and hypocritical is what they are.
they want to make an example out of people trying to escape the panopticon.
this is what peak democracy™ looks like, dont be fooled
This is yesterday’s news. Destroying evidence is a crime in a lot of jurisdictions. With that in mind, I don’t understand how somebody who apparently uses Graphene OS didn’t bring an empty burner when crossing one of the most notorious borders in the world.
Which isn’t to say that the laws that require you to unlock your phone and that throw you in jail if you securely wipe it aren’t hostile and inhumane.
I cross the US border every few months.
Stopped carrying a laptop, still crossing the border with a graphene phone, tho.
In order to be convicted of destroying evidence, there needs to be proof that there was “evidence” on the phone in the first place.
If something on the phone is already known without doubt, then what’s the need for access? if there is doubt at the time of the wipe then there is no proof or destroying evidence. 🤷♂️
Except that this person wasn’t accused or even suspected of a crime.
How are they supposed to know there was evidence on it? I’m allowed to delete my files, aren’t I?
Be careful not to swallow your spit. They may think you’re swallowing a bomb and shoot you on the spot.
i think it would have been different if he wiped it before he came through customs. he gave them the pin, which destroyed the data after it was requested. almost like the phone was boobytrapped.
personally i just try to delete most of my communication apps on the plane before i get back to the states (signal, lemmy, instagram…) in case they want to search my phone and get mad about a meme. (precident). i also try to offload as much as possible to selfhosted apps where applicable (rss reader, podcasts) so i can just log back in and have everything.
i dont know how far these searches can go, but id be worried about password managers and app store history too along with any account where you can just “log in with google” or whatever. once the device is unlocked and in their hands, they can have access to quite a bit of personal information.
i bet theyre just pissy this technology exists and are trying to make it illegal.
Not if you’re given a Lawful Order ™ to produce that material. Whether or not that material is incriminating is irrelevant.
They aren’t but it is the same as if you have been accused of murdering some one and you burn the car you are accused of moving the body to the river in.
Edit: I am not saying i think its how i should work but its the logic behind it
They didn’t accuse him of anything, and let him go afterwards. This was an illegal search attempt.
I’m no lawyer, but I think that’s called circumstantial(ly improbable). Try convincing a jury of that. 🥲
This sounds a lot like proving my innocence instead of them having to prove guilt.
If I understand correctly they didn’t actually delete anything it just shreds the encryption keys so it can’t be accessed. Idk if the difference matters a whole lot though.
No it wipes the data from the phone
GrapheneOS provides users with the ability to set a duress PIN/Password that will irreversibly wipe the device (along with any installed eSIMs) once entered anywhere where the device credentials are requested
That is a distinction without a difference. Either way the once accessible data can no longer be accessed any longer.
Very interesting! I’d like to ask a lawyer how they think the courts would view that. The data is intact, just not decryptable. 🤣
Sounds like we might find out how the courts will view it.
Stay strong 😓✊
