Link: https://www.404media.co/dhs-said-they-searched-man-who-wiped-grapheneos-phone-for-child-abuse-material-they-lied/

When a Department of Homeland Security official sent out an alert to stop Samuel Tunick, a Stop Cop City activist, at an airport in January 2025, they said the reason was because he was suspected of “terrorist activities,” according to new filed court records which include a screenshot of the alert and photos of Tunick’s interrogation.

Tunick ultimately provided Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials with a code that, when entered, wiped his security- and privacy-focused GrapheneOS phone. Tunick is now being criminally charged for that alleged act, in one of the most high profile technology civil rights cases in recent memory.

The court records also showed that CBP officials lied to Tunick during his interrogation. Instead of saying he was being targeted for suspected terrorism — although this search happened just at the start of the second Trump administration, it has dramatically broadened what organizations or people may be considered such — they said they needed his phone to look for “kiddie porn.”

“Good afternoon,” an email sent from a Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) official, part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to CBP and other officials reads. “The following subject is scheduled to arrive in ATL [Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport] today via DL 1778 @ 1930 Hours. TUNICK is under investigation by HSI/JTTF for suspected terrorist activities.” The email includes a photo of Tunick, and asks the officials to direct him to secondary inspection, retain all of his electronics, and collect their passcodes.

As 404 Media first revealed in December, Tunick was charged because he allegedly “did knowingly destroy, damage, waste, dispose of, and otherwise take any action to delete the digital contents of a Google Pixel cellular phone, for the purpose of preventing and impairing the Government’s lawful authority to take said property into its custody and control.” Matthew Dodge, one of Tunick’s lawyers, previously told 404 Media he only found one other case using the same obscure law, a drug trafficking case. “This is extraordinarily rare,” Dodge said.

Tunick was part of the Stop Cop City movement in Atlanta, which broadly protested the building of a large police training center, and which authorities investigated for arson, vandalism, and doxing. Tunick is not suspected of any crime beyond the alleged wiping of the phone, and has previously put his current prosecution in the context of the wide spanning cases against other Stop Cop City protesters.

The newly filed court record, in which Tunick’s lawyers argue that evidence should be thrown out, include new photos and descriptions of the airport encounter. The CBP officials asked Tunick if they were going to find “kiddie porn” on his phone, which Tunick immediately denied. “As the evidentiary hearing made clear, these unfounded accusations were nothing more than pretext for a fishing expedition into the depths of Mr. Tunick’s devices,” the lawyers wrote. They added, “Officer Findley acknowledged that officers had no reason whatsoever to believe Mr. Tunick possessed child pornography,” referring to one of the officials.

Tunick faces a maximum of five years in federal prison for allegedly wiping the phone.

“I hope people understand that the charges against me are meant to intimidate people against protecting their data and their privacy, and the government hopes to set a precedent that no one has the right to privacy,” Tunick previously told 404 Media.

Tunick is not suspected of any crime beyond the alleged wiping of the phone,

Tunick faces a maximum of five years in federal prison for allegedly wiping the phone.

What if he wiped the phone the day before? Does graphene os tell you that it just wiped the phone after entering the code?

GrapheneOS really should set up a way for you to create a custom 'nothing to see here' profile, where you install some apps (your choice), create some plausible docs and downloads, etc. all innocuous but genuine. Then 'capture' that and tuck it away to blast over right after the duress-pin blanks everything 'real'. That way it isn't even obvious a duress-wipe has even occurred. It would need to be fast, and look just like a successful unlock to a real pre-existing profile.

They say, they observed flashes of light and the phone rebooted (or something like that) which means he obviously was in cahoots with the devil destroyed evidence. That is if they really even saw that, but maybe there is a recording

I'm still impressed that wiping your phone is considered a crime, regardless of what is or isn't on the device.

anything is a crime when you don't make the rules.

Can't you already do that? Just make a second profile and have that be thr last one you logged into.

That wouldn't have even given him plausible deniability. They already knew most of what to expect on his phone, My guess is they had someone on the inside and also had a strong dossier of his communications. They were looking existing evidence. and new stuff.

From a SIGINT standpoint, they know when and where you use your phone; they know when you sleep, and likely have a pretty good picture of who you're talking to before you become a person of interest enough to want to scan your phone.

When they check your phone and the data/times don't line up, they'll confiscate it, detain you for as long as they can, and either crack it or wait for a zero-day.

It's not a horrible idea, it might stop someone from getting detained while they hold the phone.

Falls along the lines of oil execs shredding information when the feds walk in to bust them. The idea is sound when they're not trumping up terrorism charges for someone who opposes a cop training facility in their town.

Hmm. I'd say do it on your main user, but anyone with two brain cells could go to your users and swap over. Not that your average ice agent doesn't have them competing for third place, though. A sub profile would also have the same. I wonder the viability of, instead of a suicide pin, if you had a dummy pin: Input the dummy pin to load a dummy profile only.

I mean you can, but, this all hinges on the unconstitutional powers ICE will use to try and access your phone, up to and including as this gentleman has demonstrated blocking access to legal counsel. I think what this user is recommending is a dummy profile that can be accessed by people without giving away that there are other profiles; giving ICE the pin to a dummy profile would just allow them to see in profiles that you have a parent profile that they would then ask for access to, continuing your illegal detention.

It can only be “evidence“ if there is an investigation. If there is no investigation there is no “evidence”

I had an oppo phone like a decade or more ago, where i made a fake phone profile that unlocks with a different finger print. I used it when i hand over the phone for something. But in a shithole country like the US i doubt that would hold up, because it would be suspicios. Hell, i bet my phone would be suspicious, because i have no social media or bloat ware on my phone.

Yeah, I forgot about the part where they illegally took devices without detaining the owner, or something like that. I'm not fluent in legalese spells

After entering duress pin, it dumps you to the bootloader and informs you the boot image is corrupted/inaccessible, and your only option is to reinstall the OS and set it back up from scratch

So yeah, graphene basically throws massive flags that its been wiped, but only on the first boot

I think that anybody without social media is in danger at a US border.