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- Hacker News
- It's great publicity for GrapheneOS, has probably led to a huge spike in traffic to their website and downloads.
And ongoing publicity as the trial happens.
by TheqO - Please note that "search" does not mean agent just scrolling through your photos.
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.
by deepsun - "defends" is doing quite a bit of flashy work for this headline. "Feature works as advertised, nobody upset" would be a much more practical headline.by 1970-01-01
- The government appears to be quite upset. You wouldn't want to upset ingsoc would you?by RobotToaster
- It is illegal to lie to a police officer in the US. It's better to remain silent than to tell a lie. Giving a false PIN is a lie. And that by itself is a crime.
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.
by seethishat - There are limits to the lies they can tell, IIRC. They are limited to lies which would not harm an innocent person. So if an officer says "We have your fingerprints on the murder weapon", that is fine, because an innocent person will know that there is no way that can be true. Whereas a guilty person would presumably find that lie plausible.
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.
by EPWN3D - Couldn’t GrapheneOS provide a special pin which boots into an “empty”session? Where the user can install some default stuff to not look suspicious?by shreddit
- im not sure if grapheneos does or not, but it's not a novel idea, and often will only be a delay tactic.
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"
- People are doing that in Belarus (since 2020 the repression still continue). You also need to create a convincing profile and story for all the usual apps. Alibi if you wish.by deepsun
- It would be easily detected by widely used forensic software from Cellebrite and other companies. It would also definitely look suspicious. We explained in much more depth in response to a related proposal:by grapheneos
- Right, they should restore the phone to a user-picked previous state, as opposed to wiping it clean.by petilon
- They said they don't bother because it's non-trivial to implement convincingly, so they don't bother, lest it gives people a false sense of security. For instance, if you do this, and the adb logs aren't scrubbed, then that's massively suspicious and that'd still you in legal hot waters.by gruez
- This probably doesn't hold up legally, but it does hold up logically: if the reason a border search exemption exists is to prevent importation of material that is unlawful to import, wiping a storage device also fulfills that purpose.by Zak
- It would seem that the officer was searching for evidence of a crime, not to prevent importation.
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.
by RegW - As a GrapheneOS user and a U.S. citizen that cares about the constitution, I fully support the actions taken by the individual
- Seriously. All of these comments talking about the legality are completely missing the point. At most this indicts the current laws, rather than the person who was illegally and immorally surveilled, searched, detained, coerced, and now harassed through the legal system. Anybody standing on a narrow view of "but this is just the law" while we have an outright hostile government that actively hates our individual liberties has wholly lost the plot.by mindslight
- The "agent entered password themselves, therefore they're to blame" seems as good of a logic as "I'm going to start swinging my arms and start walking forward, so if you don't move, it's YOU hitting YOURSELF".by pavel_lishin
- enough metaphors though. Here is what I think probably actually happened, based on the multiple accounts I've read:
"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!"
by thecrash - That's egregiously disingenuous. Having a password that protects the infiltration/extraction of your intellectual artifacts is in no way akin to assault on someone else.
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.
by rc5150 - Maybe digital forensics shouldn't be handled by barely highschool graduates at a busy border crossingby skullone
- This is possibly the best advertising. GrapheneOS was kind of niche before. But if the US Government hates you then you're on the right track.by yardie
- On one hand, I love GrapheneOS and see it as a cornerstone of digital privacy software. I have supported the project financially for years.
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".
by illithid0 - This should be an interesting case in today’s legal climate
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.
by mingus88 - > Either way, the user complied, and did not take action to wipe their device.
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.
by tsimionescu - You put a sticky note with the duress PIN on your phone. When detained, the officer notices a PIN in plain sight on the phone, enters it, and the phone wipes itself. You were never asked for a PIN.
Could you be charged with destruction of evidence?
- If you have a safe in your home and you knowingly wire up a bomb that goes off when a certain lever is pulled then you lie to the police and tell them the way to open the safe is to pull that lever you'd pretty clearly be responsible for the damage done when the bomb goes off.
I don't see why this would be any different.
by CSMastermind - Intentions matter. If the intent is to trick the officer to enter a PIN code that will destroy potential evidence then it does not matter that you didn't type the PIN code. Your speech is the thing that triggers a series of events that you know will lead to a wipe. Just like you can be charged with destruction of evidence even if you trick someone else to take the action.
- The founding fathers would be aghast at what America became. Hard to imagine modern America passing some of those constitutional amendments that older America passed wayyy back.by mmastrac
- Who cares what the slave owners thought. What you should care about are Americans who support this stuff now.
- Many if not most of the founding fathers owned human beings, and the vast majority of people (94% of the population) weren't allowed to vote because they didn't own property or they happened to be female.
What are you even talking about?
by scoofy