When a Department of Homeland Security official sent out an alert to stop Samuel Tunick, a Stop Cop City activist, at an airport in January 2025, they said the reason was because he was suspected of “terrorist activities,” according to new filed court records which include a screenshot of the alert and photos of Tunick’s interrogation.
Tunick ultimately provided Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials with a code that, when entered, wiped his security- and privacy-focused GrapheneOS phone. Tunick is now being criminally charged for that alleged act, in one of the most high profile technology civil rights cases in recent memory.
The court records also showed that CBP officials lied to Tunick during his interrogation. Instead of saying he was being targeted for suspected terrorism — although this search happened just at the start of the second Trump administration, it has dramatically broadened what organizations or people may be considered such — they said they needed his phone to look for “kiddie porn.”
“Good afternoon,” an email sent from a Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) official, part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to CBP and other officials reads. “The following subject is scheduled to arrive in ATL [Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport] today via DL 1778 @ 1930 Hours. TUNICK is under investigation by HSI/JTTF for suspected terrorist activities.” The email includes a photo of Tunick, and asks the officials to direct him to secondary inspection, retain all of his electronics, and collect their passcodes.
As 404 Media first revealed in December, Tunick was charged because he allegedly “did knowingly destroy, damage, waste, dispose of, and otherwise take any action to delete the digital contents of a Google Pixel cellular phone, for the purpose of preventing and impairing the Government’s lawful authority to take said property into its custody and control.” Matthew Dodge, one of Tunick’s lawyers, previously told 404 Media he only found one other case using the same obscure law, a drug trafficking case. “This is extraordinarily rare,” Dodge said.
Tunick was part of the Stop Cop City movement in Atlanta, which broadly protested the building of a large police training center, and which authorities investigated for arson, vandalism, and doxing. Tunick is not suspected of any crime beyond the alleged wiping of the phone, and has previously put his current prosecution in the context of the wide spanning cases against other Stop Cop City protesters.
The newly filed court record, in which Tunick’s lawyers argue that evidence should be thrown out, include new photos and descriptions of the airport encounter. The CBP officials asked Tunick if they were going to find “kiddie porn” on his phone, which Tunick immediately denied. “As the evidentiary hearing made clear, these unfounded accusations were nothing more than pretext for a fishing expedition into the depths of Mr. Tunick’s devices,” the lawyers wrote. They added, “Officer Findley acknowledged that officers had no reason whatsoever to believe Mr. Tunick possessed child pornography,” referring to one of the officials.
Tunick faces a maximum of five years in federal prison for allegedly wiping the phone.
“I hope people understand that the charges against me are meant to intimidate people against protecting their data and their privacy, and the government hopes to set a precedent that no one has the right to privacy,” Tunick previously told 404 Media.
Called bullshit as soon as I read they were accusing him of kiddie stuff.
This is why GrapheneOS’s passcode feature is more likely to land you in trouble - it’s too “hostile”
I’d rather it load an empty profile while it wipes everything in the background.
The idea itself is good… But his defense strategy is even better: they are denying that he even had the duress code configured. The accusation must be able to prove he had, and I think proving it will be very hard to do.
When you enter the wipe passcode, iirc the screen flashes and the phone reboots / wipes - that’s how they were clued in that he ‘did something’ and that’s why he’s being charged and faces 5y in prison for the act.
A hidden wipe would have prevented this.
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This sounds overly optimistic bordering on delusional. There are countless examples of courts siding with authorities based on nothing but their say so and this case is a perfect candidate to ‘make an example’ out of someone uncooperative with said authorities. It’s easy to discount the stress of having a potential 5 year term hanging over you when you’re not on the receiving end of it.
Unless you’re deliberately looking to fight the fight (unlike the majority of people who find themselves in this situation), the plausible deniability provided by a more discrete wipe would keep both your data and you personally safe.
Remember folks, until the law applies equally to the owning class, its only there to keep you in line, and they will be willing to overlook anything necessary to keep you in that line.
Won’t work.
They’ll call in experts from the FBI, forensics firms, etc. Show the court other graphene OS models, show what happens when the duress code is entered and ask the agents whether it matched what happened. Demand his lawyers provide an alternative explanation (there are no other plausible ones). Search github and try to find similar reports of the Graphene phones “just doing that” as in wiping themselves or displaying a screen like that. There won’t be any. Reasonable conclusion that’s good enough for a conviction will be that he gave them the duress code.
He’ll either go down or walk on other factors such as the legality of the search, whether the fact he didn’t personally enter it counts (I really doubt that holds water, it’s like encouraging cops to activate a booby trap that burns down your house, the courts take a dim view of it and it’s still destruction of evidence), or some other vague technicality.
Also cops are allowed to lie to you and do it regularly as a matter of practice so the police lying to him about what the search was for is not illegal. It was a tactical, calculated lie designed to outrage the subject and get him to cooperate to prove he wasn’t a pedophile.
And the word of authorities is considered to have more weight than the word of your average person so their word it happened like this vs his that it didn’t and no other plausible explanations with evidence for his version of events and they’ll find against him.
The best thing to do is not cross international borders with sensitive info on your device. The second best thing failing that is to use a securely encrypted device like Graphene that they can’t crack and while passing through customs to put it in before first unlock mode such as restarting it.
What Graphene should have is a setting that wipes the phone automatically after so much time without an unlock. They’d have seized his phone, wouldn’t be able to crack it. Would set it aside hoping for a future vulnerability to be discovered by those zionist fascists they employ and the phone while in storage and through no direct action of his would wipe itself before they could deploy such a future vulnerability 6-12+ months down the line. Now maybe they already have a way to affect the clock on the device to prevent such a thing but it’s the only alternative I can think of to hoping the encryption stands up and there are no vulnerabilities found for years or ever.
It can stick. Here is your reasonable plausible explanation: What if they maliciously wiped the phone clean after unlocking it just to frame him of something, after finding the data on the phone wasn’t justifying the libel or the trouble?
Assuming that they actually didn’t have any specific demonstrable reason to suspect him of terrorist activities, maybe someone was just hating him for no rational reason, or just wanted to make an example of him.
Passcodes should be covered by the fifth amendment: when asked to provide them, say “I am exercising my right to remain silent.”
Biometrics, however, are not covered, and cops can point your phone at your face or grab your hand to unlock the device
Iirc this happened at a border crossing outside of American jurisdiction where the officers argued that those laws do not apply (while insisting that the american laws he is being charged for breaking do)
It happened at a border crossing where the fascists claim you don’t have rights, but I fucking dare anybody to show me where in the Constitution justifies that.
Passcodes are not “private info” everywhere, AFAIK in the UK if you refuse to give up your passcode you could get up to 5yrs of jail time.
While that’s good information to know, this is a case in the US, so it’s kind of irrelevant.
Hands duress code
oops, you should’ve been more specific
They have charged people with major crimes for that. For inducing their phone to wipe itself when they are looking at it.
I mean clearly destroying evidence is also illegal.
How do you know it’s evidence if you never saw what’s on it in the first place?
I don’t make the rules but they already decided it was evidence for possible “kiddie porn”
It should add a biometric duress option so that when cops do this it shoots themselves in the foot
They should! Also then they can’t blame the phone owner for giving them a duress password to wipe the phone, because they didn’t.
You underestimate how little the authorities care about the rules. They would still charge for it, not that we shouldn’t do it anyway.
yeah… your right.
yes, and use the middle finger as the duress biometric code
that’s an interesting idea, but what would you mean exactly? Like biological signs of duress being detected or a secret duress biometric pass that’s distinct from the one you’d normally use such as one finger and not the other? Because the first option would be bad news if you felt stressed one day and tried to use your phone and the 2nd option would I guess be just as bad as the passcode wouldn’t it? They’d say you used a duress biometric instead of the normal one you’d otherwise have used and it wiped the phone, interfering with their investigation and destroying evidence and then prosecute you for it.
So, GrapheneOS should have a function that replaces the content of the phone with a vanilla set of apps and a clean account, instead of wiping it, on receiving the distress code.
No, we need to keep a crumpled post-it note with the wipe password written on it in our pockets.
It’s the police’s fault for just typing in the unlabeled code they found. We use our actual passwords all the time - why would we have to keep those written down?
Keep the duress code written down on a piece of paper in the phone case, under the phone.
Oh, that is a good one!
You are proposing a technological workaround to fascism instead of a political actual solution. You see how that’s hardly fucking helpful, right?
I am suggesting both
This specific case is kind of a clusterfuck of questions regarding jurisprudence. He might slip away on a technicality because law enforcement has gotten sloppy under feelings of invulnerability these days.
In general though, I doubt they are going to protect the right to destroy data on a device that is or is about to be legally seized. Any reasonable person would expect that the device includes the data on board, and therefore taking action that results in the destruction of that data would be destroying evidence.
Use burners when traveling.
If he’d just committed a heinous crime I could understand them being allowed to legally seize and search his devices after getting a warrant, but he wasn’t being criminally charged with anything, right? Do they have the right to scroll anyone’s private photos who passes through customs?
That’s one of several questions this case will likely set precedent for. I’m guessing the answer will end up being yes.
Society will be forced to move to polaroid nudes only :(
Most probably only the USian “society”, tho. I know they’re too insular brained but still. The difference is important. Most of us don’t live under a Patriot Act, for instance. Crazy, right?
Your society, lol.
You aren’t likely that far behind, judging by the way things are shaping up around the world
Sadly true.
The answer will never be “yes.” The government lie might be “yes,” but that’s only because it’s tyrannical and illegitimate.
Seize devices yes, but after they have it, it’s not going anywhere. There’s no sign of imminent danger either. So they can apply for a warrant just like for any other search.
They’ve been doing that for ages already.
He didn’t destroy anything. The customs officer did by entering the “destroy data” key. He wasn’t under any obligation to give them the correct one, because no court had told him to provide his data.
What’s the difference between destroying data and encrypting it with a random key? And is it okay to destroy/randomly-encrypt data through a scheduled dead-man’s switch instead of by giving out a duress code?
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I thought about this too, but I think you’d still be charged (IANAL).
If you look at what he was charged with:
Tunick was charged because he allegedly “did knowingly destroy, damage, waste, dispose of, and otherwise take any action to delete the digital contents of a Google Pixel cellular phone, for the purpose of preventing and impairing the Government’s lawful authority to take said property into its custody and control.”
So, even if you nuked your phone before going through security or even at home before your flight, I imagine you could still be prosecuted for “knowingly… delete the digital contents… for the purpose of preventing… lawful authorities to take said property into its custody”.
It’s all based on your intent behind the action and this is what the prosecution and defense would argue.
edit: typo
So technically, if I as much as delete cookies because I don’t want anyone, including the government, to track me, I’m breaking the law in the US and could be charged and imprisoned for up to 5 years? Land of the free 🤣
I know you’re being sarcastic, but I think removing cookies and trackers could easily be classified as “self-protection”.
But if you shred your blueprints for building a dirty bomb, or delete your contacts to your local drug dealers with the intention of obstructing justice - then, yeah, you’re gonna have a bad time.
Oh, that would be the common sense, right? My point is exactly the fact that you don’t need to be doing anything illegal in order to be charged. If you’re building a dirty bomb, that’s illegal. Shredding blueprints is obstruction of justice, an additional charge, that’s common sense. But shredding blueprints for a garden shed isn’t illegal, because building a garden shed isn’t illegal. Just the same, deleting cookies - or wiping your phone clean - shouldn’t be illegal, unless it’s concealing a crime. Protesting against police brutality is not a crime, organising is not a crime, there is no evidence he did commit any crimes. He’s being charged because he prevented a baseless, illegal search. And if preventing an illegal search is a crime, then all searches are legal and privacy is dead.
Not surprising. Protecting Kids & Fighting Terrorism are always the reasons to violate our rights and it’s rarely ever actually about that.
If protecting kids is one of their main goals, I wonder why they did not start with the Epstein friends?
This is something I’ve been saying for a while.
The right constantly fearmongers about pedophiles because CSAM is a really easy tool to frame someone. It’s a crime that requires minimal evidence and creates significant disgust.
Expect more of this.
And yet the Epstein files go unaddressed. They know their base will one day eat them alive if allowed so they claw for power to avoid the consequences.
Remember Assange, ie this could happen in any of the Five Eyes.
These child fuckers are now falsely accusing others of child abuse? Why is this not surprising?
Send all these fucking traitors to the camps they keep populating with innocent people.
Why is this not surprising?
Because projection has been their go-to #1 strategy for every single fucking thing for over a decade?
“Officer Findley acknowledged that officers had no reason whatsoever to believe Mr. Tunick possessed child pornography”
I’m pretty sure if I made up a lie at work I’d get fired. seems to be a requirement for law enforcement
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This is what they’ll always do to make privacy impossible.
Theyre jus trying to scare people, and even in this spooky scary context dummy phones defeat it
This is happening in GA, the state. He participated in “stop cop city” an anti-police thing. Unless he has a very good lawyer they will put him in prison for anything they can.
They’ve already murdered one protestor.
You were warned long ago, these CP laws will be used to take a lot of people down, just like the drug laws, they all have the same purpose, though different targets.
Every time the government is granted powers, it abuses them. It’s in their nature, they can’t help it, they are after all people.
That’s why transparency is so very important.
You are always a “suspect” for something, and CP is perfect for them to abuse because almost everybody has a phone full of photos, so they always have a “reason” to search your phone. This guy didn’t do a goddamn thing.
These cops won’t miss a day, and if they do, it will be paid for by us. We don’t get to search their phones womp womp
I don’t know what the solution is. I think that cops should have to pay the price for abusing our laws, that would be a good start.
I don’t know what the solution is.
I do. Eliminate the border search exception for the contents of digital devices. It’s already trivial for any serious criminal to transfer illegal data over the internet instead of carrying it on physical devices, so such searches are usually a pretext to look for something else.
As I recall the law they’re trying to get him on for giving them a duress password doesn’t even reply to data, and requires a physical act, not a verbal one. It’s the stretch of a stretch.
I hope the defense points out that the agency almost certainly had other means of accessing data on a phone other than using a password. Never mind that they had no reason to believe that his password was accurate.
If they had said to him “unlock your phone,” and he entered the duress password, that might fly. But they didn’t. They took his phone, asked him what the password was, and entered it. So technically they did the act.
daamn. they would do that…
