Comment by hamdingers

3 hours ago

Or keep it in a faraday bag and have the phone wipe if it sees it. If you're ever searched (or otherwise indisposed), they'll open the bag and wipe your phone for you.

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hamdingers

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patcon  2 hours ago

Oh hey, I like this variant! So... both the BLE beacon and the phone have a faraday cage, and if they ever appear together outside their cages, the phone wipes?

Perhaps less likely to go wrong than my original proposal when living normal life, as it might wipe if the BLE signal randomly gets lost.

It would be nicer if you could leave phone in cage during security, and remove beacon while loading airport trays ("remove all electronics from their cases..."). the only chance for a failure mode is only when you're going through security, and have the fob outside its case..

But you'd need to be able to leave your phone in the faraday cage pouch while going thru security, which is only ok if they don't notice... (maybe they commonly don't notice small faraday pouches aren't empty... Maybe they wouldn't if you had a secondary mobile device...)

  • hamdingers  1 hour ago

    I was imagining only the BLE beacon living in one of those little faraday pouches people put their key fobs in. They should be pretty much transparent passing through the x-ray and a pouch with an airtag in it wouldn't raise any suspicion at all at the airport.

    Only once you're getting invasively searched would they (ideally) dump the pouch out into the tray with your phone.

NewJazz  2 hours ago

This depends on the beacon being visible. If they just take the phone and walk away, because that's where they think the evidence is, it won't wipe.

  • hamdingers  1 hour ago

    When I've gotten secondary screening the first thing they do is take all my belongings and rifle through them on a table. That seems to be standard practice and I'm sure it was step 1 in Tunick's ordeal.

    Both approaches have situations they wouldn't work in. If you're extra paranoid you could do both.

iAMkenough  2 hours ago

> If you're ever searched (or otherwise indisposed), they'll open the bag and wipe your phone for you.

Isn't that the same issue here that resulted in felony charges? Border agent was given a duress PIN and wiped the phone for the owner. Now owner is charged.

  • fluoridation  12 minutes ago

    It's not the exact same situation. Whether it's similar enough to be prosecuted or convicted is a different question.

  • hamdingers  1 hour ago

    I don't see how. Regardless of how you feel about the lawfulness of the overall situation, Tunick gave an agent false information which resulted in the phone being wiped. That's intent.

    This requires no action whatsoever from the phone's owner, you could even be unconscious/dead and it would still work.