Comment by pjc50

11 hours ago

Paywalled, but what is the actual charge? Is it some extremely generic "obstructing an investigation" one? The US is quite good about making court documents available on line, if someone can find it.

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pjc50

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hoppyhoppy2  11 hours ago

The article says he was charged with obstruction.

You can try this "gift link" to the article: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/08/21/us/politics/samuel-tunick...

jeroenhd  11 hours ago

Knowingly providing a PIN that would erase evidence is going to get tough in court.

But the man was also hated by the cops because of his activism. They were going to catch him for something, some day. This incident just provided the necessary excuse to lock him up.

  • myrmidon  10 hours ago

    There is no duty to keep a copy of messages and private data on your phone for the FBI to peruse at its leisure. Quite the opposite, actually (according to the constitution).

    It is pretty clear to me that law enforcement conspired to abuse a border crossing to effect basically an unconstitutional search ("fishing expedition"), which it would never have gotten a warrant for.

    This is them being spiteful after that whole thing failed. Note how law enforcement basically admits this on the record. The whole thing is a disgrace; every decisionmaker involved in this should be sacked immediately.

  • gonzalohm  11 hours ago

    How can they prove that? What if it was a glitch?

    • jeroenhd  10 hours ago

      That shouldn't be too hard. Get someone from Google or someone with any tech knowledge to explain to the judge how phones normally work, what encryption keys are, the implications of wiping an encryption key, and then get someone to show the difference between entering a normal PIN wrong several times and entering the duress PIN. You just need to convince the jury (or judge, if there is no jury for whatever reason).

      People have gone to jail or have been executed for less than a glitch. Theoretically a highly charged particle from space could've messed with exactly the right transistors exactly when entering the correct PIN and trigger the wipe process. There is no way to prove that didn't happen. But you don't need that kind of proof.

  • bdangubic  10 hours ago

    > They were going to catch him for something, some day. This incident just provided the necessary excuse to lock him up

    funny reading this (don't disagree) and then also reading on HN how China is "bad" this is some gestapo shit but not surprising that it is getting normalised ...

    • jeroenhd  10 hours ago

      China is strictly worse than the USA when it comes to border controls. That doesn't mean the USA is good or acceptable in any way; these laws are part of the reason why I don't plan on visiting the country. The USA also has much worse laws on the books, like having to give the authorities your social media passwords to check if you're secretly a terrorist (though that doesn't apply to citizens).

      Excessive border patrol power has been around in the USA for ages now, it's all part of the post-9/11 package. I don't think many Americans even know they live in a zone where the border police can do shit like this, even if they haven't left the country, as international airports are usually near big cities, and they have a wide border zone around them. This stuff only really makes it into the news when it happens to one of the "good guys".

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    • deaux  10 hours ago

      China is indeed "bad" for the gestapo shit. The difference is that China's gestapo shit comes with benefits for the common man too, whereas in the US the gestapo shit only serves the inner circle at the top of the regime with zero benefits to 99% of the populace.

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