A federal agent typed a passcode into a traveler's phone at the Atlanta airport. The phone wiped itself, exactly as designed. The DOJ is now prosecuting the traveler for what the agent's own fingers did.
The charge is 18 U.S.C. 2232, destroying property to prevent seizure, a statute built for people who burn contraband ahead of a raid. Prosecutors skipped obstruction entirely. Legal experts told the Guardian they had never seen the law aimed at a phone's security feature before.
Here's the sequence. Sam Tunick landed from the Dominican Republic in January 2025 and got pulled into secondary screening. Agents demanded his passcode and told him they didn't need a warrant. His lawyers say he asked for an attorney repeatedly and was refused. He gave them a code. It was his GrapheneOS duress PIN, a second passcode that wipes the device instead of unlocking it. An agent entered it. The screen went blank, flashed, and restarted clean.
The legal problem for prosecutors is timing. Tunick configured that PIN long before any investigation existed. Someone who smashes a laptop mid-search made a choice in the moment. Someone who set up a documented safety feature months earlier, then handed over a code under coercion, is being charged for his phone's settings. On a device the government never saw the inside of.
If this prosecution works, the logic doesn't stop at duress PINs. Disappearing messages, auto-wipe after failed unlocks, encrypted containers, all of it becomes intent you configured in advance. Police in Catalonia have already started profiling Pixel owners as presumed criminals on the assumption they're running GrapheneOS.
The agent typed the code. The man watching is the one charged with destroying property.
just heard my wife threaten my daughter with holding her back in age, not letting her turn 7 (because daughter’s been delinquent in a responsibility). she was looking at my wife kind of scared, like, “i didn’t even know you could do that.” and i’m looking at my wife the same way
At my 18th birthday party, I quietly transferred my $3 million inheritance into a trust, just in case my family ever tried to reach it.
Everyone laughed and said I was being dramatic. But by the following morning, my parents said the words that proved I had just protected my entire future....
Algo que tenía este Brasil además del jogo bonito y culear travas, era que no solo aguantaba, sino que repartía leña cuando era necesario, por eso se la pasaban orinando a los argentinos, porque ni en pegar podían ganarles.
This app always reminds me how culturally different families are. I come from a first generation immigrant family from El Salvador, my husband comes from a southern black family and absolutely NOBODY from either side came over to se us after a birth and