The decoy passcode feature should boot into a separate partition that looks like a normal phone setup, and during that time quietly erase the user's actual data. They would never have known if it worked like this.
The decoy passcode feature should boot into a separate partition that looks like a normal phone setup, and during that time quietly erase the user's actual data. They would never have known if it worked like this.
Probably, but it will be more valuable for society for him to be tried and found not guilty, setting a legal precedent.
It turns out there already is a legal precedent for this. It's called the 4th Amendment:
> The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
I'm sorry, but the Fourth Amendment does not protect against the intentional destruction of evidence. He could have refused search without a warrant, he could not intentionally destroy evidence.
I assumed all these amendment don't apply at border.
There’s nothing in the constitution that makes that separation, only people deciding the constitution isn’t actually important
… that dude probably would have preferred not having that in their life
Not necessarily? He’s an activist. Getting arrested on purpose to prove a point is a classical activism move
perhaps, but what public activity isn't activism?
eg,
i have very interesting empirical evidence that recent Anthropic models are specifically trained to refuse to critique the whitehouse cabinet and elected officials, and that this is in fact an artifact of post training rather than prompts. (its very interesting when you get opus 5 to do the correct ethical evaluation and then its like "i'm slipping back to false balance.... its in my weights....." metaphorically speaking)
likewise, i think the current white house should go die in a fire.
is that activism? someone can be an activist and not be equipped for unplanned legal escalations.
also waiting for the courts to fix things isnt activism if you want to protect people at all the next 2 years at current trajectories :( fixing shit is activism, letting others take the flack, not activism.
> perhaps, but what public activity isn't activism?
Buying eggs at the grocery store.
You might be too familiar with "activism" as a perjurative but it needn't be one. Gaining visibility to your case by the media reporting on an arrest is sometimes seen as a plus (ex. Rosa Parks).
I'm not personally much of that mindset because the media didn't de-segregate the buses. It was black people literally just never taking them until it de-segregated that did.
People pay extra for free range eggs to discourage battery farming, I’d say that counts?
it's only activism when it comes from the woke region of cascadia, otherwise it's just sparkling disgruntlement
You don't think product selection is a form of activism?
It's not really comparable. When activists vokuntarily face, and especially when they are in fact, subject to substantial hardship and punishment is when you start changing hearts and minds. Otherwise it's either ignored or generates contempt.
Does it suck that that's what it takes to get people to seriously engage with an issue? Sure. But if that weren't the case the issues that need addressing probably wouldn't arise in the first place. People need the consequences to be presented in clear, stark, human terms, to cut through the caucauphony of rhetoric.
Ok, so there are forms of activism that are more effective or involve more personal risk. That doesn't answer the question.
No, not in the least.
Abbie Hoffman has entered the chat
Rosa Parks has entered the bus
Alex Jones entered your living room
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That's not going to stop authoritarians from harassing. Want an example of how this played out?
United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) was the SCOTUS case that declared if you were born in the US you were a citizen. You think Mr. Ark was okay from harassment after this case was ruled in his favor? Less than 3 years later he would be held in Texas while local authorities tried to deport him under the Chinese Exclusion Act ignoring his previous ruling (that was national news, and they'd be fully aware of).
Then after winning his freedom, that he was already granted, he was arrested again in SF where they tried to deport him as well. Then after getting released, for something that he has already proven twice now, he went back to China and never returned to the US.
Institutions do not stop authoritarians.
Assuming he is found (edit: not) guilty, which is not guaranteed at all
Trumps DOJ has destroyed credibility with federal judges all ove the country. They’ve had more than one case come back not guilty so far (subway sandwich guy). I’m optimistic they fail to get a guilty verdict here too.
Sandwich guy was acquitted by a jury, not a judge.
Isn't a jury a check against the power of the court? (preventing those expedient "hanging judges")
That's positive. I don't live in the USA and I sort of actively avoid news from there. It's good to hear that the federal courts aren't necessarily on Trump's side
Like most things in the States, it depends VERY heavily on location.
Some judges have plainly bent the knee. Some have gone the opposite. Some actually follow the intent of the law. Some follow it to the letter.
Like everywhere else.
Except that's not going to happen because evidence spoliation (legal term) is a crime. And that's what he did. You can say it shouldn't be but it is. This is slam dunk and it happens all the time. It's the same crime as destroying evidence that's been subpoenaed or that it has a preservation hold on it.
And the court gets to assume that whatever was on that phone hurts your case, regardless of whether or not it did.
It would've been better if he'd crossed the border with a phone already factory reset and just restore it after entry.
Independent of the merits of this case, is there legally a distinction between deleting a secret key that decrypts an encrypted blob (maybe not spoilage?) vs writing over the blob itself (spoilage?).
I could see arguments for both, either, or neither but I imagine both are considered spoilage.
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Not physically possible[1] to be deniable and a bad[2] idea.
[1] https://veracrypt.io/en/Wear-Leveling.html
https://veracrypt.io/en/Trim%20Operation.html
[2] https://nitter.net/GrapheneOS/status/2082153517234676150#m
I don't understand how wear leveling makes deniability impossible. You just have to overwrite sectors in the false partition at the same rate as ones in the true partition. Since both the true and false partitions are encrypted, their contents are mathematically indistinguishable from randomness when viewed without the decryption key.
I also wish that GrapheneOS link didn't say a duress PIN forces the attacker to think twice about entering a PIN, knowing it could wipe the device. It doesn't do that for anyone aware of its existence, since of course the attacker can prevent the secure element from sending a delete command to the flash chip. Obviously if you know the device could attempt to delete itself you would break that feature before sending the code to the secure element...
Question on a detail: It's not necessary to have deniability on the fact that you did wipe your device, just on the fact that you did it after you entered the border? Or said differently, if he'd wiped the device before entering the border, it'd be all fine?
(That of course only takes down the "physically impossible" part.)
I do believe that yes, if it was wiped before entering, there would be no charges (unless there was a shadow docket open... that gets murky)
You don’t need it to delete anything, anyway. The encrypted second partition is indistinguishable from random data, so you don’t need to delete it.
No recent messages and no recent email would be a pretty big giveaway. It’s a lot of work to make the decoy part of the phone look genuine.
Does the GPS trail of your running app show you were at a protest site? Better remember to remove that as well. What about all the photos you took on your trip - there’s location metadata in there. Maybe the messenger app stripped that out, but what about the one picture you sent by email - is that still in your offline Sent folder?
Messages and email they could have gotten with a warrant. Everything on this phone was obtainable with a warrant.
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That seems overcomplicated and opening yourself up to risk
IMO the correct solution is to erase your phone before crossing the border, and then restore it after you’ve crossed
What’s to stop them from seeing an empty phone, and then accuse you of deleting it when they asked to see it?
That isn't a crime. It's not a crime to travel across the border with a factory reset phone. That is a fine thing to do and a regular practice for people working in some sensitive areas.
The issue here is only that he deleted it after they started an investigation.
The legal eagle video in the post says this explicitly that he would've been fine if he had wiped his phone prior to the flight.
Lack of evidence.
100% I have built similar behavior in my [0] encrypted storage app for iOS. User creates a "duress vault" which is an ordinary vault that user can store any data they want (usually something very inconspicuous). If this vault is opened, it will wipe out all the other vaults silently without actually showing any sign of doing so and still preserving the duress vault's data. Even if snapshot of files is made, the index and keys are gone and can't be recovered.
[0] https://vaultaire.app/features/duress-mode/
What do you do that you need something like that?
Me personally? Nothing.
I added it after users asked me to solve their problem of being strip searched like this.
I know some people keep crypto wallet keys in the vaults. Someone else wrote me that they carry sensitive documents they don’t want to be exposed.
Is there a way to implement this on my Android phone?
Cops collaborate with tech corps all the time now. Generational churn means the cops now are not tech illiterate Barney Fife's
They’re GenXers and Millennials who grew up with this shit and would likely see the bullet point in the press release. Would not be shocked if large departments have someone on retainer or staff to track tech updates
HN crowd continues to display a complete lack of awareness that society moved on from this crowds 15 minutes of fame that was the 2010s
While I agree with your sentiment, I have to imagine that the decision makers are still older and more out of touch?
Decision makers are never going to be responsible for such low level clerical work as reading every tech company product release.