The foundation behind the ultra-secure Android-based OS is speaking out after an activist was indicted for using a ‘duress password’ to prevent federal agents from searching his phone.
The foundation behind the ultra-secure Android-based OS is speaking out after an activist was indicted for using a ‘duress password’ to prevent federal agents from searching his phone.
irrelevant unless his statements are going to be used against him
I don’t really see why this is an enormous civil liberties story. Destruction of evidence can, I think, legitimately be a crime even in a free and democratic society. It’s not like they’re trying to make the feature itself illegal… the main civil liberties complaint to have here is that searches of phones on borders are a thing at all.
Compared to https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/you-can-be-prosecuted-clearing-your-browser-history/ (from 2015 - 11 years ago, under the Obama administration!) where the person apparently didn’t even know the government might be considering the deleted stuff “evidence”, I find this story harmless.
Except that, IIRC, it was not he, but an agent, who entered the duress PIN. He would have had to make a statement giving that PIN, and that statement would not be admissible if he weren’t read his rights. If the only evidence of destruction of evidence was a statement he supposedly made, then how will they prove that he made it if it is inadmissable? This is, of course, pretending we live in the world of Faerie, where laws, the constitution, and silly things like “legal precedent” still have meaning.
Ah, I see. Yes, that makes it more interesting, I agree.