best promotion ever haha What is it? FU-123?

On GrapheneOS, you can also set a "second factor PIN" in the unlock settings under "Fingerprint Unlock", so that to unlock your screen you need to first use the fingerprint unlock and then separately enter your PIN. This means BOTH are required every time you unlock. Your phone can't be unlocked unless it's your finger AND unless you enter the PIN that only you know.

And under the Screen Lock settings you can also enable "Scramble PIN input layout", so that the number buttons on your unlock screen will be out of order, so people watching you or recording you can't just make note of the shape your index finger is making when touching the numbers to unlock your phone(like people looking over your shoulder or recording on store security cameras).

Its good if the courts hold that sentiment up in his favor.

If they don't and take the border patrols side in this case then this just sets a horrific precedent for the future.

I hope the feds get raked over the coals in this court case and not only loose but get the dog shit sued out of them for this stunt.

I'm not optimistic anymore though.

Legality seems to be a fairytale concept in the USA, except for oligarchs. They get full legal coverage.

There’s a bunch of legislation and case law saying that searches are OK within x (50?) miles of a border crossing which covers something like 90% of the population because they count international airports.

So it might get sticky for the person.

Perfectly legal. Unless they were legally charged and ordered by a court to preserve data considered to be used in a crime, they can’t be charged with shit. Cops don’t dictate this, courts do, AND that scope only applies to an active prosecution anyway.

I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not arguing that you're wrong here, but the article describes the federal law the journalist was charged with. It seems very broad, and it's a bullshit law, but from what's here, it seems more grey area than perfectly legal. All of 2232 seems to require knowledge (which it seems like he had, but might be arguable) and action. You could argue that the journalist didn't take any affirmative action to wipe the phone. The action that wiped it was the feds entering a code.

It depends. If the police suspect the owner has evidence of some sort on the phone, destroying it can lead to a tampering with evidence charge from the police.

A tampering charge doesn't have to be from a court order. If someone eats or dumps out drugs where the police can't collect the physical drug, it will stick.

But in the story's case, it falls within the 100 miles of the US boarder (called a boarder search exception) a warrant, probable cause, or RAS aren't needed here. It's considered a reasonable search so the 4th amendment is limited here.

There is a lot to it and really don't think this is the best format for it here.

If it was evidence, they fucked up BIG TIME if their actions weren't read-only from the beginning. A distress password would be an attempt at destruction of evidence, but completely unsuccessful.

If it's not US soil, it's not a detention, it's a rendition, a kidnapping.

Also, I don't know how citizenship works I this respect in the US, but in my country a citizen cannot be denied entry. It can be detained upon entering, but by then you are in sovereign soil.

But what law/rights do apply there?

Tourists going to the US and US residents leaving should take a burner phone.

I lost interest of ever visiting again when they started collecting fingerprints from everyone visiting.

In all likelihood they kept his phone and will retain possession until charges are dismissed. Get a burner phone and wipe it before going through security. I assume if they see your phone is "fresh" they'll take it on suspicion anyway.

Would you want the phone back after it's been in their hands? I wouldn't trust them to leave it alone.

Surely he was also using the built in backup feature, if he was he would have been able to grab another used Pixel, install GOS, then just recover from his backup (I haven't tried the restore yet just because I'm lazy, fingers crossed it works).

This is an excellent idea honestly.

yes you can. On Graphene you can set the main profile as just there with nothing except to control wifi/add esim/etc. Then you can create many profiles with their own passwords. You can store your work stuff in 1 profile, private stuff in another. You can even create a dummy profile with fake Google. .

The downside currently is that the OS autoboot to main profile. Then you switch to your other profiles.

I believe some password manager (was it 1Password?) has this

That exists. The thing to watch is the difference between separate profiles and a hidden one.

Graphene gives you multiple profiles with their own passwords, but profiles are enumerable. Anyone poking at the device sees that profile 2 is there, so "open that one too" is the obvious next sentence.

The version you're describing works when the second environment can't be shown to exist at all, so it reads as encrypted random noise, which is what empty encrypted space looks like anyway. One PIN gets you a full boring phone, the other gets you your real one.

Only holds up if the boring phone is actually convincing though. Six apps and no photos fails on the spot.

(I work on DeniableOS, which does the hidden version, so weigh that how you like.)