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Friendly reminder that, per the fifth amendment, you are not required to disclose your passwords to the authorities under any circumstances. This protection does not apply to biometric authentication, so don't enable those methods.
That's honestly a curiosity in this for me. You dont have to unlock your phone for them but the fact that he was made to even with a duress pass makes me think that this was more than a standard stop.
He absolutely didnt have to unlock it under the law.
He was within his right to wipe it.
But what led him to doing so?
This isnt a defence of the boarder officers. Im just curious what the other side of the story is.
Edit: ah there it is. They suspected him of having csam and by implication being a sex tourist.
Heavy accusations. So they did have some suspicion (or at least claimed to) to justify the search.
From The Guardian article on the same incident:
The defendant, Sam Tunick, was stopped for interrogation at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport on 24 January last year, after vacationing in the Dominican Republic. Unbeknown to him, federal authorities had put him on a terrorism watchlist because of his alleged association with the movement against Cop City.
Ahhhh
thanks!
Once again fascists cry protecting kids to violate rights.
Every time I hear someone invoking "protect the kids" I know 3 things.
- It has nothing to do with protecting kids, they're hiding their intention.
- It's probably some outrageous bullshit they absolutely need to hide.
- It's probably because they are fucking kids.
Number 3 was added recently because apparently based on the facts we now know... that is MUCH more common with these people than I could even imagine.
That’s why I stopped using Google for anything. Their AI is calling people child abusers left and right. And even after a person is cleared by law enforcement, they will not let that person get their data back. It could be innocent family photos or legal adult content. Haven’t used their services in years after the NYT articles and the several others from other news organizations that followed about their awful practices. They don’t care about correcting false positives only about the perception to share holders that they are fighting child abuse by closing almost a million accounts a year. Same for Meta, who closes many millions of account per year to stop child abuse, while hosting child abuse for advertisers. I didn’t supply links to the articles, but they can be easily found through a StartPage or DuckDuckGo search or which ever search engine you use (hopefully not Google).
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Since they just let him walk after the phone wiped itself, they clearly didn't actually believe he was a risk of any kind. If there was any actual reason for suspicion they would/should have detained him outright.
He was put on a terrorist watchlist because he didnt want his tax dollars funding a cop city. Thats reason enough for the judge to throw this out.
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There are some of us that know these things happen and take steps to protect our rights and personal data.
Most all of us here have multiple methods employed to avoid being tracked online via browser plugins or whatever. Some of us take it a step further and lock our phones should an encounter with LEOs be a possibility, and he had a wipe command to go even further.
These days the US is closer to a lot of fascist authoritarian states, and it’s probably only a short time before they throw people in jail for whatever manufactured reason because they wipe a phone before the Gestapo can pry into it and charge us with the crime of being un-American or some shit because we posted a meme mocking trump.
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Doesn't matter what his reasons were to wipe the device, that's the point of privacy, not to hide criminal activities.
Yep.
Biometrics are SUPER unsafe, and insecure, because you can be physically forced to put your finger on a sensor, or to stand still for them to hold a phone infront of your face for faceid. I've literally seen videos of cops holding a guy in a choke hold whole another cop unlocks his phone with his face.
but they can't physically manhandle you into typing in a password.
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If you have iOS you can disable it quickly by spamming the power button (button on right hand side of screen) 5 times.
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Cute that you think the Constitution still exists.
It is actually harder to torture a password out of someone than hold the phone up to their face.
Constitution ain't got shit to do with that one way or another.
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SECURE IN YOUR PERSONAL EFFECTS AND DOCUMENTS
-Bill of Suggestions
"except within 100 miles of the border where you have no rights at all, because that's convenient for me so I made it the fuck up"
--SCOTUS, defender of FREEDOM
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How is this illegal?
It's not. Authoritarians want it to be.
I was kind of flabbergasted when a police office interviewed in this video just straight up said you have a right to privacy in your home, but as soon as you step out, gone.
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Guy was innocent until they had proof of a crime. They didnt have any proof so boohoo for them. And they charged him of damaging property. Its his property, and its not damaged.
The intent of the law was to have something to charge corporate fraudsters with if they destroyed the accounting records with proof of their fraud when served a warrant. Or illegal drug manufacturers destroying their chemlab. Ownership of the property doesn't come into it.
The envisioned cases were always domestic crime investigations where there was already enough evidence to get a warrant. The application at customs where they don't need a warrant is the novelty, and I really hope the government loses its case.
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Unless he was subpoenaed is this a crime?
The laws are now made up when needed and justice doesn't matter. So, yes. Anything the authorities don't like is a crime in a fascist regime.
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“Wiping your phone before an illegal search is now left wing terrorism”
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a duress password?
What a neat idea.
I wonder if i can set that up on my iphone.
I believe it's only currently possible on Android. There's Graphene's built-in solution which uses a pin or password, and then there's other android apps that can trigger the wipe if you get a text message with the code.
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Good don't give those fascist fucks anything.
Even if he did, so what? His phone, his property, his business. He should be able to do what he wants.
Good. We all need to set this up. Fuck ICE and TSA.
It exists for a reason, they couldn’t have shown better why if they’d been paid to film a commercial.
Everyone is cheering but the case was not thrown out yet. For now we just know this is technically possible which we knew already. Now we will find out if you can do this and not go to jail. I will cheer when this guy walks free.
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He wasn't being charged with anything at the time.
And....? There's nothing illegal about wiping your phone if not already under indictment of something
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My password is the text of the 4th Amendment. I don't unlock my phone often.
https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt4-6-6-3/ALDE_00000239/
No need for a warrant, and the 4th amendment doesn't apply in this case.
Under the border search exception, federal officers may generally conduct routine, warrantless searches of persons and items entering the United States without reasonable suspicion or probable cause of unlawful activity.
They have near autonomy to search you and your belongings for any reason upon entering the country.
We don't have to let them. We can fight it to make change happen.
And we should. They are no masters.
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If border patrol claims they don’t need a warrant because he’s not in the US yet, then how does border patrol have jurisdiction?
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I like this guy. Oh, you wanna see my phone? Fine, here ya go asshole.
What a great idea. If I was able to I'd create a free Android and iOS app that did this exact same thing.
GrapheneOS has this feature. Also ripple
And the article mentions that it actually was GrapheneOS on his phone.
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Set your phone to require a pin or passcode at startup then reboot your phone before going through the checkpoint.
Or just put it in Lockdown mode, effectively the same thing.
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this post was submitted on 24 Jul 2026
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