{"id":960995,"date":"2026-07-26T19:38:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-26T19:38:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/960995\/"},"modified":"2026-07-26T19:38:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-26T19:38:18","slug":"the-us-is-charging-an-american-citizen-for-wiping-his-phone-at-the-border","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/960995\/","title":{"rendered":"The US is charging an American citizen for wiping his phone at the border"},"content":{"rendered":"

The government is prosecuting US citizen Sam Tunick for allegedly providing authorities with a \u201cduress password<\/a>\u201d that wiped his phone when they tried to seize it at Atlanta\u2019s Hartsfield-Jackson airport on January 24th, 2025. Federal agents detained Tunick at the airport, allegedly questioning him about child exploitation images. However, a motion filed by Tunick\u2019s lawyers argues this was simply \u201ca pretext for a fishing expedition into Mr Tunick\u2019s connections\u201d to the Stop Cop City<\/a> movement in Atlanta.<\/p>\n

The government is turning to a little-known and rarely-used statute that makes it illegal to destroy or damage property to stop authorities from seizing it. They allege that Tunick used a feature of the privacy-focused GrapheneOS<\/a> to wipe his phone by giving authorities a duress password, instead of the actual passcode to unlock the phone. The defense has argued that the detention and seizure were unlawful, and therefore all evidence should be tossed.<\/p>\n

According to Tunick\u2019s attorneys, agents refused him access to a lawyer, did not provide a warrant, or inform him of his legal rights. They also allege that access to his phone was sought under false pretenses. The government has countered that they were not required to produce a warrant because Tunick had not yet been granted permission to enter the US.<\/p>\n

Marlon Kautz, a member of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund<\/a>, told the Guardian<\/a> earlier this week that, \u201cwe all have a right to secure our private data against unconstitutional searches. And we should \u2014 especially in a time of rising authoritarianism.\u201d Under the Trump administration, entering the US has become a much more fraught process, even for citizens who can face hours-long detention<\/a> and scrutiny of social media accounts. Most agree the only way to protect your data<\/a> is to delete it<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The government is prosecuting US citizen Sam Tunick for allegedly providing authorities with a \u201cduress password\u201d that wiped…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":960996,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[6],"tags":[64,3228,50,153,27016,242,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-960995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-law","tag-news","tag-policy","tag-privacy","tag-tech","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116987973516562822","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=960995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/960995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/960996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=960995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=960995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=960995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}