Exactly what a duress code is for, watch this lawsuit shrivel like a dick in the cold when they try to identify exactly what “evidence” was deleted.
That’s not how the law works. In fact, that’s intentionally not how the law works specifically because of what you said. They don’t have to “identify the evidence” that was deleted; they need to show that records were destroyed knowingly and intentionally which the government intended to and had the lawful authority to seize – namely and quite broadly the contents of his phone, which he obviously, knowingly did. In fact, this is so not-how-the-law-works by design that the US legal system uses the common law concept of adverse inference for cases when evidence is withheld or destroyed.
If the federal government shows up to search my house and I burn my house down, the point isn’t “well show me what evidence I destroyed lol”. This is borderline SovCit pseudolegal logic.
Here’s the statute he was charged under.
As I noted in another comment, it’s likely the “lawful authority” of the government to have performed the search in the first place will be challenged, which is what the statute requires in part (a). It’ll be up to the government to show they had this authority – which it seems like they didn’t, and I hope it gets thrown out, but regardless, your interpretation of this is abject nonsense.
TL;DR: They do not need to know a single byte of information that was on his phone for this charge provided they can show they had lawful authority to seize it.
The phone owner is either outside of the US, where they don’t have jurisdiction, or inside the US where should be protected from this level of invasion of privacy
Well, yeah, I agree: hence I hope these charges are dismissed.
I’m going to call out nonsensical reasoning even if it arrives at a conclusion I agree with (maybe even especially if it arrives at a conclusion I agree with).
In this particular case, there are also 5th amendment issues with the Miranda warnings.
The CBP officers repeatedly ignored the defendant’s requests for a lawyer, and they continued to question him anyway. Then, the defendant allegedly told them the “unlock” / duress code.
There’s existing case law in the US that phone unlock codes are “testimony” within the 5th amendment’s right to remain silent, so a search warrant cannot compel someone to divulge them. (This is different from a phone unlock fingerprint, which can be compelled with a warrant).
I halfway expect the government to argue somewhat against this case law, but who knows? DOJ is now scraping the very bottom of the barrel to find lawyers, so sometimes it’s hard to tell if they have any kind of coherent plan at all.
Wow! You may be right here, not a SovCit, just European and not used to how the US criminalises their citizens in every way possible. For a country of “free speech” and “freedom” there sure are a number of ways you let the government walk all over you.
I wonder when they draw the line, could you be persecuted for deleting an email while at home before you travel? on the plane? What about in the security line?
In this case it’s just as likely that he accidentally gave the duress code instead of his actual pin, given zero crime this should be a valid and successful defense, although murca gonna murca.
just European
- French Penal Code Article 434-4: “Est puni de trois ans d’emprisonnement et de 45 000 euros d’amende le fait, en vue de faire obstacle à la manifestation de la vérité : 1° De modifier l’état des lieux d’un crime ou d’un délit soit par l’altération, la falsification ou l’effacement des traces ou indices, soit par l’apport, le déplacement ou la suppression d’objets quelconques ; 2° De détruire, soustraire, receler ou altérer un document public ou privé ou un objet de nature à faciliter la découverte d’un crime ou d’un délit, la recherche des preuves ou la condamnation des coupables.”
- The UK covers this as “perverting the course of justice”.
- Maybe not surprisingly, then, Ireland covers this too: "(a) knows or suspects that an investigation by the Garda Síochána into an offence under this Act is being or is likely to be carried out, and “(b) falsifies, conceals, destroys or otherwise disposes of a document or record which he or she knows or suspects is or would be relevant to the investigation or causes or permits its falsification, concealment, destruction or disposal,”.
- Austria StGB Section 229: “(1)Absatz einsWer eine Urkunde, über die er nicht oder nicht allein verfügen darf, vernichtet, beschädigt oder unterdrückt, ist, wenn er mit dem Vorsatz handelt, zu verhindern, daß sie im Rechtsverkehr zum Beweis eines Rechtes, eines Rechtsverhältnisses oder einer Tatsache gebraucht werde, mit Freiheitsstrafe bis zu einem Jahr oder mit Geldstrafe bis zu 720 Tagessätzen zu bestrafen.” (Edit: And in case you want to grasp at straws with “right of disposal”, Section 111 of the StPO covers seizure laws. Germany covers its obligation to comply with seizure under StPO 95, but I don’t know specifically about how spoliation of records is treated.)
I have no idea why you assume this is some US-specific concept. Maybe some European countries don’t have this (I’m not certain, this was based on a very cursory, two-minute DDG search), but there definitely are ones that do.
Edit: And dude, come on: “In this case it’s just as likely that he accidentally gave the duress code instead of his actual pin” Literally nobody’s going to buy the “oopsies, I gave you the ‘nuke my phone’ code instead of the regular one I use multiple times per day by mistake!” defense. Trying to argue that would be a recipe to lose, as you’d lose all credibility with a judge/jury when you have actual credible, legal arguments you can make. You can just say things; that doesn’t make them true or reasonable. “Your honor, a cosmic bit flip destroyed my phone!”
In order to “pervert the cause of justice”, there has to be a crime. Save your AI tokens, my comments are here more for humour and whimsy than legal advice.
Maybe you should take Lemmy less seriously.
Save your AI tokens
I literally just used DuckDuckGo to look up the laws of a few countries over like a couple minutes using relevant keywords (albeit I already knew “perverting the course of justice” in the UK) because you decided to keep spewing uninformed bullshit. I don’t use LLMs for research because I’ve found I can normally do it faster and better. (Edit: I should clarify I used an LLM to translate the laws via DeepL, but not to find them.)
I’m sorry that seems so difficult to you that a human wouldn’t go to the effort.
my comments are here more for humour and whimsy
I mean I’ll give you humor: I’d pay to see you represent yourself pro se; your combination of stupid, annoying, and arrogant would be magical. I’m sure the court will love when you start making ridiculous, bad-faith interpretations of the law based on nonsense semantic arguments. You could be the next “Your honor, I wasn’t driving; I was traveling.”
In the US, you don’t have to specify what evidence was destroyed, but you DO have to offer a reasonable, articulated suspicion that a crime has occurred, you have to specify what crime has occurred, AND you have to specify the type of evidence you’re looking for.
To use your burning down the house analogy, the police would have to say, “I think you’re selling cocaine, based on the fact that I arrested someone leaving your house with cocaine and they said you sold it to them, and I want to search your house for cocaine,” before they file destruction of evidence charges because you burned down your house.
They can’t say, “I think you’re selling drugs because I think you look like someone who sells drugs, and I want to search your house for anything that might be drug-related,” and that’s basically what happened here.
For the destruction of evidence charges to stick, they first need to present evidence that a specific crime might have occurred, and present evidence suggesting that evidence of that crime exists on the phone, AND specify what kind of evidence might exist. So, if they have text messages from another person, that could be used to prove another half of the conversation is on the phone. If someone testifies to pictures or videos existing on the phone, they can use that. But they can’t just say, “SOME evidence of SOMETHING must have been on there.”
It most likely is going to get tossed just on procedural constitutional violations- they didn’t read him rights, didn’t provide him a lawyer, and actively lied about what they were supposedly searching for.
I saw this same comment in the comments on the article and it just doesn’t make any sense. The owner of the phone didn’t burn anything down, the feds did. They were the ones with the device, they were the ones that typed in the code.
This would be like the federal government showing up to search your house, you saying “no”, they say “give us a key” (not the key to unlock, but a key) and you give them one set on fire and they light the house on fire themselves. You didn’t do anything except give them what they asked for, it’s their fault they didn’t realize what it would do. I believe if the defendant argues it properly in court there’s gonna be nothing the Feds can do, because he didn’t interfere with anything.
Maybe if the feds had asked for the passcode that let them into the phone so they could search it then that’s one thing. But I seriously doubt they did.
edit: in addition what he’s being charged of is destruction of property to prevent seizure. The government still has the phone, they were not prevented from taking property under their control. This statute doesn’t match in any sense of the word.
for the purpose of preventing or impairing the Government’s lawful authority to take such property into its custody or control or to continue holding such property under its lawful custody and control
They were the ones with the device, they were the ones that typed in the code. […] and you give them one set on fire and they light the house on fire themselves.
I have no idea how some people can believe the words they say. Literally the entire point of a duress code is that the attacker doesn’t know that it’s a duress code – that it looks indistinguishable from a normal password. In your example, the key is physically on fire. A duress code is “oops, I gave you the key that activates a hidden mechanism to burn my house down. Guess you’re the ones who destroyed it lol.”
To say “well your honor, I intentionally tricked someone into destroying the evidence for me” would not hold up in court is an understatement.
I’m not trying to be condescending, genuinely making sure because your analogy is so far-off: you are familiar with what a duress password is, right?
I’m not trying to be condescending, genuinely making sure because your analogy is so far-off: you are familiar with what a duress password is, right?
yes… and you do understand that if you are a federal agent who is questioning someone, you probably shouldn’t be trusting anything they say right? You do understand that these are ‘special agents’ who should (and do!) have training on different operating systems and how to get into them right? The FBI is known for buying tools to get them into iOS even, the CBP breaks into phones daily!
I have no idea how some people can believe the words they say.
Right back at you. Let’s do a different analogy. If I give someone a gun and they murder someone with that, I’m not culpable. Unless they tell me they are going to murder someone with it before I give it to them. And then you’re an accomplice to murder, but not a murderer. If the CBP told him they were going to unlock the phone with the code then sure, he’s an accomplice to the actual crime which is “Destruction or removal of property to prevent seizure”. Which would require trying the CBP agent for that same crime. Do you think the CBP agent is going to be tried for it?
In any case, my analogy isn’t off at all, either of them. An CBP agent knows better, and if they don’t they’re incompetent and should be fired.
Just say you gave the cop the right password but the dipshit fat fingered it and typed the wipe password, which was similar.
No way to prove otherwise.
