Phone Goes Brrr: Man Wipes Own Device at Border, Now Faces Federal Wipeout Too 📱

Samuel Tunick, a 35-year-old Atlanta resident, has been charged under 18 U.S.C. § 2232, a rarely invoked federal statute that makes it illegal to knowingly destroy property to prevent authorities from seizing it, after he allegedly entered a "duress password" on his phone during a warrantless border search at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on January 24, 2025. According to The Guardian, the case represents the first known criminal prosecution in the United States involving the feature due to the use of a password. A duress password is a second unlock code set up alongside a regular PIN: entering the real code opens the device normally, while entering the duress code triggers an immediate, irreversible wipe that deletes the encryption keys securing the data and leaves the phone at factory settings.

The feature is built into GrapheneOS, a privacy-hardened version of Android available exclusively for Google Pixel phones and used by journalists, activists, and security researchers. Edward Snowden publicly endorsed the operating system in a November 4, 2022 post on X, writing, "I use GrapheneOS every day." The operating system added the duress PIN in June 2024, designed for scenarios in which a user is physically compelled to hand over a device. GrapheneOS previously appeared in legal disputes in 2023, when Decrypt reported that devices running privacy-focused operating systems proved resistant to court-ordered monitoring software.

According to court filings, Customs and Border Protection agents pulled Tunick into a secondary inspection room as he returned from the Dominican Republic and demanded access to his phone without a warrant, citing the "border search exception" to the Fourth Amendment. His attorneys say he was denied access to a lawyer and was not read his Miranda rights. When he provided a code, agents observed that "the screen went blank, flashed several times, and the phone appeared to restart." The federal indictment accuses Tunick of providing "a passcode to border agents that caused the phone to delete the digital contents," prior to the device being seized. Tunick has pleaded not guilty, and a federal judge is expected to rule on his motion to suppress no earlier than the end of October. The Electronic Frontier Foundation maintains a public guide on device rights at the U.S. border.