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A GrapheneOS Privacy Feature Just Became the Basis for a Federal Indictment
An Atlanta resident, Samuel Tunick, is fighting a federal indictment that treats a privacy feature on his phone as evidence destruction. A grand jury charged him under 18 U.S.C. § 2232(a), a statute that covers destruction of property to block seizure by a government agent.
The root cause of all this was the deletion of a Google Pixel smartphone's contents during a border search, and the case itself sits in the Northern District of Georgia under case number 1:25-CR-499, before District Judge Eleanor L. Ross.
If Tunick is found guilty, the charge carries a fine, up to five years in prison, or both.
On January 24 last year, the CBP placed Tunick into secondary inspection at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport as he returned from a trip to the Dominican Republic, putting him through several rounds of questioning and searches.
The officers started off by searching him, checking what he was carrying, and demanding that he fork over the passcode for his phone. All of this was reportedly done under the pretext of searching for CSAM.
He also asked for a lawyer multiple times, but the officers ignored every request, never read him his Miranda rights, and kept questioning him anyway. When he pushed back, they said it was "a whole different ballgame" at the border and that they didn't need a warrant.
But, the moment it was entered, the screen flickered blank a few times before the device rebooted itself, erasing its contents in front of the same agents who'd demanded access.
The motion filed by Tunick's lawyer stresses that his association with Defend the Atlanta Forest, an AGAAVE-labeled outfit, was the actual reason federal agents moved on him, not any crime.
Earlier, a Homeland Security agent had circulated Tunick's name and photo hours before his flight landed, flagging him for suspected terrorism activity, while FBI and CBP officers coordinated to set up the search.
Despite that, the government has never presented evidence tying Tunick to an actual crime connected to the movement.