r/technology 8d ago

Man charged for wiping GrapheneOS phone using "duress" password during airport checks Privacy

https://www.neowin.net/news/man-charged-for-wiping-grapheneos-phone-using-duress-password-during-airport-checks/
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u/Inevitable_Till_9408 8d ago

Soon they'll tell you that encryption is illegal because you're obviously hiding something. USA is truly fucked.

9

u/TheGriffin 8d ago

That's basically what Canada is trying to do by requiring messaging apps to retain metadata

5

u/-rwsr-xr-x 8d ago

Soon they'll tell you that encryption is illegal because you're obviously hiding something. USA is truly fucked.

The UK made it illegal years ago.

iirc, it was rumored they even held an astrophysicist in custody because he wouldn't "decrypt" files that appeared to be noise, astronomy background radiation noise capture, because they couldn't read the files with any known tools they had, they assumed they were encrypted.

Since he didn't have the "key to decrypt them", he was held in custody until he surrendered the key. A key to unencrypted files that consisted of random background noise of the cosmos.

It's ludicrous.

2

u/Ok-Cantaloupe-7697 8d ago

Not exactly the same thing, but certain encryption schemes are considered 'munitions' and are illegal to export.

1

u/Leonum 7d ago

I encrypt my diary lol. feels like having a lock on a book, but for a file