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this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2026
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Privacy
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TL;DR he used a "distress code" or something like that to wipe his local device.
Duress. And yeah, as OP mentioned kids are an excuse to have an easier time defaming anyone pushing against it. "You wouldn't steal a car" vibes. Suddenly everyone is a CSAM producer or thief unless proven otherwise, and I doubt there will ever come a time when an authoritarian figure has interest to prove someone they're pursuing is innocent.
But I must say you can install whatever OS you want. The reason they placed federal charges against that guy was because he allegedly deleted incriminatory evidence. They told him they were searching for child pornography, something that was completely made up as they had been tracking him because of his links with activists that were trying to protect a forest. He gave the wrong code (and could say he did so by mistake) and whoever had the misfortune of taking the phone from him wiped the phone's data when entering it.
NAL, but it may be important that there was no legal case pending at the time he gave the duress code. And like you said, he didn't even enter the code himself. But it's tricky since there's also some clause in the law about reasonable cause to believe there could soon be a case.
In the end, the case is purely politically motivated, and the allegations were made up out of nothing. Hopefully that makes the case fall apart once it reaches the courts. Which has happened in lots of other cases, like Reflecting Pool Olympian Guy. I hope the EFF will get some high powered legal rep spun up for this guy. Protip, donating to the EFF is good, so they can afford to do that for important civil rights cases.
I'm still NAL, but I'm hopeful that Graphene Guy will be exonerated by a jury. Ofc, it still sucks, b/c he has to spend his time and money dealing with this.