I erased my phone at the border and got a federal case.

An American activated the emergency data erase function built into his smartphone when border guards decided to seize the phone. Now prosecutors are trying to prove that pressing a few numbers on the screen is the destruction of evidence, and they want to imprison him for five years.

The case would be a funny anecdote from the category of “technology versus bureaucracy”, if not for one detail: the code was entered by the border guards themselves, writes xrust. With my own hands. And only then did they find out that the phone had turned into a brick.

What happened at the Atlanta airport

On January 24, 2025, Samuel Tunick was returning home from a vacation in the Dominican Republic. At Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, he was taken to “additional screening,” a standard procedure that can take hours for the U.S. Border Patrol without a warrant.

The agents demanded the phone and the unlock code. Tunik, according to his defense, was deprived of access to a lawyer and did not understand at all why he was being held: at first he was told about suspicion of storing child abuse materials, although the real interest of the special services, according to his lawyers, was completely different.

He named the code. The border guards introduced it themselves. And instead of unlocking the screen, the phone started the complete irreversible destruction of all data.

How the “compulsion code” works

We are talking about the duress passcode function — it is built into GrapheneOS, a stripped-down and “cleaned up” version of Android, which is installed on the Google Pixel by people who have something to lose: journalists, human rights activists, diplomats, victims of domestic violence. The developers added this option in June 2024 specifically for situations where the phone is taken away by force or under pressure.

The logic is simple: the user has a regular unlock code and a second, “emergency” one. If a person is forced to hand over the device and give the password, he says a second code. The screen does not open — instead, the encryption keys are erased and the contents of the phone disappear beyond recovery. The device itself remains intact, only the data is lost.

After the case began, the GrapheneOS Foundation released a statement: yes, this is what the function was created for, but users should soberly assess the legal and physical consequences of its use in a real situation of pressure — and not just the technical side of the issue.

A law that was almost never applied

Atlanta prosecutors charged Tunick with obstruction of justice — destroying evidence to prevent the government from seizing it. Maximum: five years in prison and a fine.

Telling detail: federal defender Matthew Dodge, who works on Tunick’s team, said that over the past thirty years this rule has been used in the district only once — in 2019, in a drug case. Lawyers interviewed by various publications, including digital security expert Rona Sandvik and senior technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation Bill Budington, unanimously say that they do not remember such accusations specifically for the duress code at all.

The indictment, by the way, contains a typo right in the name of the country — “Untied States” instead of “United States”. Symbolic for a document that could set a precedent for millions of people crossing the US border.

What is the weak point of the accusation

The government's argument is based on the fact that the phone — just a container, and the data inside is property that the authorities had the right to seize. This means that erasure is the destruction of someone else’s property.

But there is a nuance that noticeably spoils this logic: the code was entered into the device by the customs and border service officers themselves, and not by Tunik. He just mentioned the numbers. This significantly complicates the attempt to present his action as an independent act of destruction of evidence — lawyers are already pointing out that the decisive question here may be whose hands literally pressed the screen.

The defense went further and filed a motion to exclude evidence: the seizure of the phone, according to their version, was initially illegal. Tunic was not read his rights, he was repeatedly denied a conversation with a lawyer, and the real reason for the intelligence services' interest is not suspicions of cybercrimes, but his connection with the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement — opponents of the construction of a large police and fire training center in the urban forest, known as «Cop City».

Tunick himself, in an interview with 404 Media, stated bluntly: the accusation is a way to intimidate activists and discourage them from protecting their data. The human rights organization Atlanta Solidarity Fund shares a similar opinion.

Why can border guards even do this

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has long assumed that a person is not legally in the country before official entry is granted, which means constitutional protections, including protection from unreasonable search, are limited. It is on this basis that agents have been seizing and searching the devices of travelers without a warrant for years.

This is not the first high-profile case: previously, the press reported the story of an American NASA scientist who was detained at the border until he unlocked his phone. The difference is that the person there eventually gave up — and Tunick used exactly the tool that developers have been promoting for years as a legitimate privacy protection.

What's next

The court should make a decision on the petition to exclude evidence no earlier than the end of October. If the prosecution's case holds up, any use of a smartphone's built-in self-defense feature during border inspection would technically become a criminal offense — regardless of whether the investigation was a legitimate reason for seizing the phone in the first place.

For the average user, the conclusion is unpleasant: a technical function, which the manufacturer directly describes as a means of protecting privacy, in new judicial practice can turn into evidence of intent to destroy evidence. Testimony in court will not be given by lines of code, but by the wording “knew and prevented” — and this is a matter of interpretation, not technique.

Sources :
techcrunch.com
decrypt.co

Xrust Erase the phone on border — received a federal case