Mann wird wegen der Löschung des GrapheneOS-Telefons unter Verwendung eines „Zwangs“-Passworts bei Flughafenkontrollen angeklagt
https://www.neowin.net/news/man-charged-for-wiping-grapheneos-phone-using-duress-password-during-airport-checks/
Mann wird wegen der Löschung des GrapheneOS-Telefons unter Verwendung eines „Zwangs“-Passworts bei Flughafenkontrollen angeklagt
https://www.neowin.net/news/man-charged-for-wiping-grapheneos-phone-using-duress-password-during-airport-checks/
31 Kommentare
For the sake of all of our privacy, I hope this dude wins. I also hope that the CP allegations are trumped up because I’d hate to see a CP person go free.
> He was asked to provide a password for his phone, a request which he denied. After repeated demands for calls to his attorney were denied, Tunick provided a password for his device.
The request was illegal in the first place and he had a right to refuse it. Additionally, he was denied an attorney.
It probably would have been better for him to continue denying to provide the password. They would have got nothing out of that phone when it’s locked (grapheneOS).
But I imagine he may have been threatened to the point where this was his only option.
Technically he did provide *a* password for his device.
That’s why we need a honeypot os for the law enforcement. They enter a honeypot pin – go to sandbox os that looks like a regular phone. While you can enter a real pin and go to the real phone where all the documents are stored. The only safe way to deal with this is honeypot devices.
Thats where u keep refusing to give the password but u do keep a small note tucked in to the inside of the phone case with the wipe code on it.
I wonder if cases like this are going to just result in smarter systems for this sort of thing – like if instead of a factory reset the panic password just presented a fake home screen with some inconsequential decoy data, while in the background it wipes the real data you care about.
Shouldn’t be going through people’s private phones at airports anyways, there’s no reason but power tripping and looking for anything to get him with.
Could be a thousand different reasons he didn’t want them looking through it but of course they go with that angle as usual.
so he was asked for his password, denied a lawyer, pressured into giving a password, and now hes being charged because the password he gave did something they didnt like?
they literally forced him to unlock his own phone without a warrant or a lawyer present and are mad it didnt go the way they wanted. thats not obstruction thats consequences
Great advertisement for GrapheneOS. Didn’t know about it.
The intelligent thing for them would be to have never pursued this to avoid the Streisand effect.
So I’m confused, a couple of articles have stated he was on US soil but now this one is saying he’s not, so where was he?
The US pretend to be free, but they have a bazillion laws that fuck you and the constitution in the ass. Well done.
If you are traveling internationally, leave your regular phone at home. Get a burner phone and set your regular phone voicemail greeting to tell friends what the burner number is. Before returning wipe the burner completely.
Suddenly i want that OS
Idk why other posts explaining the laws at the border are being downvoted. It’s fucked up how few rights you have when coming into the country as a citizen. Border patrol does not have to have a warrant and does not have to let you call an attorney.
And yes they can charge with destroying evidence if you destroy something they want to seize. They won’t need evidence of a crime. It would be like if you had a mysterious substance in a little baggie and they said hey what’s in that baggies and you ate it and said what baggie?
Only thing I can think of is if he just claims he gave the agent what he thought was his password.
I hope this guy is able to fight this and win and I hope people take this opportunity to learn more about the border patrol. They don’t have to operate like cops. They can pretty much do whatever they want.
It’s still blows my mind that US citizens returning to their home country, getting questioned and interrogated. Like what are you going to do? Deny entry to a citizen?
Now I wish all operating systems have this feature. I would list my duress passwords in my will to wipe all my devices.
For those of you who don’t want to click through a bullshit spam site to find a link to the source material only defined that the link that they quote goes to another spam bullshit site that finally quotes the original article from the guardian, here’s the original article from the guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/23/cop-city-protester-phone
He should pull the old “they wiped my phone, I didn’t”, and then press charges for destruction of property.
“After repeated demands for calls to his attorney were denied,”
Case closed. We have laws that the ‘authorities’ are required to follow. When they realized the ‘investigators’ weren’t playing by the rules they did the only rational thing they could to protect themselves from a rogue government.
Fuck ICE, fuck homeland security, fuck SCOTUS. This is America and we demand our rights not be infringed.
Soon they’ll tell you that encryption is illegal because you’re obviously hiding something. USA is truly fucked.
Need an OS where the duress password loads a fake launcher with access to no information.
He was involved with a group protesting Cop City in GA. That development went ahead a few years ago, but the crackdown on protestors continues. He was stopped bc of that. His name was on a list, and they were just looking to grab him for something. The phone thing is just distraction.
Apple really needs to put this feature in iOS.
this is an amazing ad for Graphene OS though
A country that can charge a man with a crime without any evidence of a crime, all the while letting known rapists and pedophiles roam capitol halls in DC.
Truly a bastion of liberty.
Adding a more detailed report from a reputable outlet (no shade to [neowin.net](http://neowin.net), I’m not familiar with their site. Their account seems accurate and in good faith, the writing is just clumsy):
[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/23/cop-city-protester-phone](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/23/cop-city-protester-phone)
>The US Department of Justice is attempting to prosecute an Atlanta resident in connection with the movement against the police training center known as Cop City because he had GrapheneOS on his phone, an open-source operating system that enables users to enter a passcode and wipe a phone clean.
>The case, which had its first hearing on Monday, centers on a little-known federal statute that makes it a crime to destroy property in an effort to prevent it from being seized.
>Experts said it may be the first time the law has been aimed at the operating system, which works on Google Pixel phones, and expressed concerns about a technology created for privacy and security being used to criminalize protesters.
>“It’s concerning – and sends the message that [GrapheneOS] is criminal by default,” said Christophe Boutry, a cybersecurity and surveillance expert. Boutry and Bill Budington, senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, both said they had not seen a similar case.
>The defendant, Sam Tunick, was stopped for interrogation at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport on 24 January last year, after vacationing in the Dominican Republic. Unbeknown to him, federal authorities had put him on a terrorism watchlist because of his alleged association with the movement against Cop City.
>Opposition to the $109m police training center, which opened last spring, came from a wide range of local and national organizations and protesters, centered on concerns around police militarization and clearing forests in an era of climate crisis. Atlanta police said the center was needed for “world-class” training and to attract new officers.
>Several state attempts to prosecute Cop City protesters have foundered in the last several years, while this is the second recent federal effort, after the justice department announced another indictment last month.
>The case began shortly after Tunick got off a plane in Atlanta, returning from a vacation spent whale-watching and enjoying nature on a friend’s boat. He did not know that a homeland security agent had circulated an email three hours before. The email contained Tunick’s name and photo and indicated he was being investigated for “suspected terrorism activities”. It was sent to agents on the Customs and Border Patrol tactical terrorism response team and an FBI Atlanta joint-terrorism taskforce officer.
>When Tunick arrived in Atlanta, an agent took him to a room with a table, several chairs and a camera and microphone, and several agents began a “secondary inspection”. But all their questions were centered on child sexual abuse images.
>These and other details were revealed in Monday’s hearing, held for a judge to hear testimony on a motion filed by Tunick’s federal public defenders, asking the court to suppress all evidence the agents obtained, including the erasure of the phone’s contents after he gave them a passcode, due to violations of his constitutional rights.
>The interrogation, including the questions about child sexual abuse images, was “a pretext for a fishing expedition into Mr Tunick’s connections” to the movement against Cop City, according to the motion.
>Tunick asked four times during the interrogation to speak with a lawyer, but was rebuffed each time, according to courtroom testimony. Additionally, the agents produced no warrant and did not read Tunick his rights.
>But a justice department attorney and the airport agents testifying on Monday asserted Tunick was merely subjected to an everyday interrogation at an international airport, “looking for anything that’s prohibited”, as Larry Findley, a CBP officer, said.
>Agent Findley and several others repeatedly asked Tunick to open his phone during the interrogation, telling him they would seize it if he did not. When he finally provided a passcode, “the screen went blank, flashed several times and the phone appeared to restart”, according to the motion.
>The motion filed on Tunick’s behalf draws into focus the question of which constitutional rights apply and which ones are suspended at national borders, including international airports.
>A judge’s decision on the motion will take at least until end of October.
>Marlon Kautz, a member of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, said: “We all have a right to secure our private data against unconstitutional searches. And we should – especially in a time of rising authoritarianism.”
>Meanwhile, Boutry, who lives in France, said Tunick’s case was of a piece with tendencies in France and Spain, where authorities have been frustrated in attempts to gain access to the phones of journalists, lawyers and political opponents due to GrapheneOS.
>In Catalonia, Spain, police have been profiling people with Google Pixel phones, assuming they have GrapheneOS installed and are drug dealers or gang members.
>At the same time, Boutry said, the “main goal [of the operating system] is protection of privacy”.
>“They’re our phones and the state can’t tell us how to use them.”
„Meanwhile, U.S. Customs and Border Protection insists that a search warrant isn’t required because the citizen hasn’t entered U.S. soil until they are cleared by border control.“
Well, if he wasn’t on US soil, then he didn’t commit a crime under US jurisdiction. I don’t think this is the „win“ that the government thinks it is.
So we don’t have rights if we’re on a boat on the ocean? Or are in America just standing on one side of a building? Or when the „authorities“ don’t feel like it? Another papers please incident. Screw that. I would 100% duress my passwords.
“Meanwhile, U.S. Customs and Border Protection insists that a search warrant isn’t required because the citizen hasn’t entered U.S. soil until they are cleared by border control.”
If his rights don’t apply, laws don’t apply and he can’t be charged with breaking one.
Just so you guys know
Zero Epstein clients have been charged thus far including Donald Trump.
All those police and nothing of value being done.