GoKawiilThe U.S. Justice Department is prosecuting an American for allegedly providing U.S. border authorities with a passcode that wiped the contents of his phone, according to an indictment and media reports.
This is thought to be the first known case in the United States where federal prosecutors have charged someone for the alleged destruction of data using a so-called “duress” password built into a phone’s software.
According to The Guardian, which covered the story earlier this week following the court’s first hearing on Monday, Atlanta resident Samuel Tunick is fighting the charges. Tunick’s attorneys said that it was unlawful for U.S. Customs and Border Protection to seize his phone as he arrived back in the U.S. last year, and that any evidence — including the alleged wiping of his phone — should be thrown out.
The case centers on a feature included in GrapheneOS, a custom Android operating system that runs in place of the software on most modern Google Pixel devices. Tunick’s attorneys confirmed GrapheneOS was running on his phone.
The software feature allows the device owner to set a passcode that deliberately wipes the contents of that device if entered instead of the user’s unlock passcode.
Tunick’s case also raises ongoing questions about what constitutional rights can be invoked at the border, which the U.S. government has long asserted is not U.S. soil until a person is authorized to enter.
The government’s indictment, which contains a typo (“Untied States Code”), accuses Tunick of allegedly providing a passcode to border agents that caused the phone to “delete the digital contents,” prior to the device being seized.
Tunick’s attorneys filed a motion to suppress the evidence, claiming that the detention and seizure were unlawful. The motion said U.S. border authorities took Tunick into a secondary inspection at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport as he returned from overseas on January 24, 2025, but that he was repeatedly denied access to an attorney and was not informed of his legal rights.
Tunick’s attorneys accused the government of demanding access to his phone under the pretext of searching for child exploitation imagery, but without providing evidence to justify its suspicion. His motion to suppress argued that the government was instead investigating him over his association with a long-running environmental movement called Defend the Atlanta Forest, which opposes the development of a sprawling training campus for law enforcement in Atlanta dubbed “Cop City.”
The motion said that the border agents claimed they did not need a warrant to search Tunick’s phone because he had not yet crossed the U.S. border. The U.S. government has long claimed it can search and seize people’s devices without a search warrant or court order until they are permitted entry to the United States.
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