posted in Technology
GrapheneOS duress PIN could land a man in prison
www.androidauthority.com/grapheneos-duress-pin-us-prosecution-3691271/
Android AuthorityGrapheneOS duress PIN could land a man in prisonA US man is being prosecuted after allegedly using a GrapheneOS duress PIN to wipe his Pixel during a border search.
To be fair, a duress pin is definitely a good thing to have if you’re being mugged, but using it to deliberately destroy data when it’s been seized by a lawful authority is guaranteed to land you in serious trouble pretty much anywhere. Whether the border agents were, in fact, a lawful authority, and whether they had a lawful reason to seize his phone are very different questions.
The much more sensible approach is to either have a separate phobe for travelling, that has nothing you care about on it, or wipe your phone before you travel, and spend a little time building up an innocuous history on it, without putting anything you care about on it. Anything you absolutely must have access to while you’re away can be stored, encrypted, online, and you can remember the details to retrieve it.
Replying to @notabot@piefed.social
Curious, why the innocuous history? Just to reduce friction?
“Where’s your REAL phone?!? We’ll strip search you for your real phone!”
Pretty much. A compketely blank phone is a clear sign that it’s wiped, and why would you do that, unless you have sonething to hide, hmm? A phone with a couple of weeks of boring use, maybe a few photos of nice sunsets, a few messages, a take-out ordering app, some boring history in the web browser, and maybe a login to a social media account that follows some celebs and an old school friends or two who don’t seem to post any more, just says you got a new phone a while back and you’re fairly boring.
Obviously, if they actually have something on you, or they want to pin something on you, those precautions won’t actually help much.