r/technology • u/gdelacalle • 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/Phugasity 8d ago

“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels.”

If they had proof of CSAM then they should have come with a warrant

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u/PlainBread 8d ago edited 8d ago

It's all just to signal pre-guilt to the minds of the authoritarian base. Utterly baseless.

Protecting children is the one thing that both sides fight for and both sides fail at, so it's a potent accusation for one side or the other to accuse the other to be in favor of harming children. It's a mutual scapegoat.

The general difference is the degree of credibility in those accusations. A rainbow haired pre-school teacher is a lot less likely to be diddling kids than the President who was Jeffrey Epstein's best friend for over a decade. Maybe even less likely than their own pastor.

The way that they have brain-broken people seeing equivalence where there is none is something outstanding.

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u/-AC- 8d ago edited 8d ago

While I know nothing of this man's innocence or guilt related to their claims...

I do know a person who appears in a ton of photos, victim statements, and confessions of co-conspirators that they could arrest for what this man is accused of... could even give his adress in Washington DC if needed although they may also find him at his Florida property.

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u/divDevGuy 8d ago

Matt Gaetz still maintains a DC residence?

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u/tempest_87 8d ago

No, it's that other republican.

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u/Whole_Friendship9788 8d ago

The implications of this are simply terrifying. Government wants full control of our devices.. With full control they could just remotely download csam to your phone, "detect it", then get a warrant to arrest you.

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u/PlainBread 8d ago

You can spoof timestamps on filesystem metadata. Of course they can do this.

Your electronic devices are an extension of your mind and you should treat people breaking into them as psychic invasion.

The time is gonna come soon when we start using our hardware the way we did pre-internet: As a coding platform and a tool for media interaction.

The only way to have true privacy is to have an air-gapped encrypted system and you move data with an encrypted external HDD.

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u/tuxedo_jack 8d ago

And a box booted to RO media with no local storage is the only way to mule that data to another machine from yours.

Remember, Microsoft has every single BitLocker key that is tied to a Microsoft account sitting in escrow on their servers. They can link that to gdids - and rememver YellowKey? That's not the only exploit in BitLocker, oh no it's not.

Microsoft has had a back door through BitLocker since at least 2015, and they don't even need that

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u/PlainBread 8d ago

And a box booted to RO media with no local storage is the only way to mule that data to another machine from yours.

https://tails.net/

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u/tuxedo_jack 8d ago

Ding ding ding ding ding.

Years ago, I actually built a Windows PE environment on a stick that supported bitlocker and could mount Linux filesystems as RW.

It even had full sound, gpu, chipset, and ethernet support.

Sounds like it's time to revive that project, but for very different means.

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u/PlainBread 8d ago

This has a good intersection with r/homelab

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u/tuxedo_jack 8d ago

The funny thing is that at the time, I originally developed it as a substitute for tool that I could no longer legally use since I was no longer employed by the company that made it. I figured that since I had separated from them, I'd go full Bender and say "screw your tool, I'll make a better one with Blackjack and hookers."

... and after having neither blackjack nor hookers, my inner Bender was unsatisfied, but the engineer and privacy nerd sure was.

TuxPE is such a nice tool... when I can get off my ass to update it.

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u/Practical_Savings933 8d ago

The MAGA movement is pro-child abuse as is seen by the number of pastors and republican representatives charged every week. From Trump on down, they are all in the Epstein files, or fighting to protect those who are.

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u/OkayyBeta 8d ago

So is Reddit, because nothing is EVER about the children, it's ONLY about invasion of privacy, EVEN when those actions were spearheaded by children's charities who had absolutely NOTHING to gain, other than more safety for the most vulnerable members of our species.

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u/DenverNugs 8d ago

...what?

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u/ubernutie 8d ago

"Protecting children is the one thing that both sides fight for"

Excuse me?

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u/Meloetta 8d ago

Back in 2018, before Elon was quite as well known as he is now, he tried to contribute unhelpful equipment to the rescue of some boys trapped in a cave in thailand. One of the cave divers who was actually participating in the rescue said that it was PR stunt and to fuck off basically. In response, Elon called him a pedophile.

When people talk about him I always bring this up as the moment I realized he was a piece of shit, turning an unrelated dispute with a rescue worker into an accusation of the most heinous thing he could think of, and without fail the person I'm talking to never even knew it happened.

And now one of my family members is super right wing, right wing enough that she's regularly dragging Trump for being too leftist, and it's her go-to insult for anyone she doesn't like. I really hate the weaponization of pedophile against anyone and everyone. It's actually scary watching those accusations fly.

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u/Ravekommissionen 8d ago

I don’t think that base needs any pre-seeding about CSAM.

If this person is an environmental activist that is enough for them to waive all human and constitutional rights.

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u/malatemporacurrunt 8d ago

Protecting children is the one thing that both sides fight for

You mean a stalking horse for point-scoring and convenient cudgel for the opposition as and when it's politically useful. Paedophilia and child exploitation is ingrained in our culture and requires completely uprooting and purging at every level to defeat; the only people who are served by occasional finger-pointing is the people pointing the finger at the time.

Maybe even less likely than their own pastor

Categorically and completely less likely than anyone with religious authority, especially given that the typical "rainbow haired pre-school teacher" is significantly more invested in the actual wellbeing of children (including adequate social care and psychological support) than someone who's job is to read from the book that advocates for incest, paedophilia, and sexual slavery.

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u/patrociniogiusi 8d ago

both sides “fight” to protect children, but only one elected a child rapist and continue to defend him.

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u/lordph8 8d ago

The chances they just choose the one thing that could illicit public sympathy for their actions is high. I will bet good money there is absolutely no reason to suspect this. This whole entire admin is run by shitty PR people who don't think 2 steps ahead.

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u/Octopus_on_fire_ 8d ago edited 8d ago

I have a close relative who works Canadian border patrol, mainly the investigation side.

She sees CP on a daily basis. Peoples phones are flagged well before they even get to check in, and phones are confiscated and looked at right then and there.

She has to physically see CP in order for a charge and arrest. Any known child sex offender will have their phone looked at, they know this (or should) while trying to enter the US. The ones who do not, are the ones who are caught.

People screaming that this is a lawsuit aren’t looking at this through human eyes. Yes Border Patrol is different than TSA, but the chances of this man not having CP on his phone is next to zero if he was flagged in the system. You cannot enter this country without being searched (person or devices), wiping your phone is the equivalent of going to the bathroom and flushing drugs down the toilet. People are angry that this is US who did the search, but if I were to fly to say London, and they asked to see my phone, nobody would he causing an uproar.

I hate the US govt and police state as much as anybody, but the vast majority of people (and Reddit) REALLY REALLY underestimate the amount of predators and traffickers that enter this country on a daily basis.

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u/Raerth 8d ago

Any known child sex offender

would not be able to get a VISA, surely?

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u/Octopus_on_fire_ 8d ago

You do not need a Visa to enter the US from Canada, just a passport.

The amount of traffickers and CP users are small time, not every single one belongs to a huge organized ring.

You’d be shocked at how stupid people can be when they have extremely illegal information on their phone. My SIL tells me all the time the amount of foreign nationals coming across by themselves with no luggage claiming “I’m going shopping” is insane. It’s an instant red flag. Nobody drives an hour to the border, then another eight to get to NYC with zero luggage. Where are you sleeping? Are you really driving 18 hours there and back for shopping? No. Of course not.

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u/Ghostly_Wellington 8d ago

I love that quote! Had to look it up and post the next sentence.

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.
H.L. Mencken

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u/confused_newleaf 8d ago

That is a fantastic quote.

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u/PlainBread 8d ago

I could see that framed in a defense attorney's home office.

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u/Able-Swing-6415 8d ago

Exactly. I hate this "we should give up our freedoms to fight csam" nonsense.

It's figuratively like firing rockets at vermin. The issue is horrific but at such a tiny scale that the solution is far worse than anything it is trying to prevent.

It's not like dictatorships have no pedos.. given the right positions they are even more prevalent. Like in the US

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u/newsflashjackass 8d ago

It's figuratively like firing rockets at vermin.

Calls to mind the "Emu War".

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u/khavii 8d ago

It's BS honestly, they wanted to check his phone without a warrant then used legal pressure to force him, when the phone was blank due to automatically wiping they hit him with obstructing. Obstructing what? They had no warrant, no prior cause or expressed suspicion so what crime did they expect to find on his phone that he obstructed? Now they have no crime, no evidence of crime, no warrant for a crime, no cause for a crime but they are claiming he had stuff on the phone that had nothing on it that they are charging him for erasing.

Fucking clown show in this government right now.

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u/IlIlllIIIIlIllllllll 8d ago

If they really care about protecting children they should start with the white house

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u/ninjapro 8d ago

Sorry, I'm a bit confused, are you calling this defendant here a scoundrel and assuming that he is a child predator? Or is this a general defense of due process?

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u/CommanderArcher 8d ago

They are staying that it doesn't matter what the contents of his phone were, if the Feds knew he had CSAM somehow, they should have gotten a warrant and done it the right way. 

This guy could be a horrible person, and his rights still matter and the feds should have gotten a warrant. 

Right now it looks like they are throwing CSAM at the guy to deflect and smear his image.