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Man Charged for Wiping Phone Before CBP Could Search It


So I guess the solution to this is to backup your phone to someplace safe, wipe it, and then restore it when you get to your destination... WTF!

https://archive.is/iAbQ6

This entry was edited (2 days ago)
in reply to ɔiƚoxɘup

This is stupid. He shouldn't be charged unless they can prove that he destroyed evidence. If it was evidence, what was it?

Did they mistakenly erase the phone trying to unlock it, or did it erase itself when he didn't log in for a certain period of time? Like obviously if he was in custody, he either knew he was going to be detained and erased it beforehand (unlikely) or they messed up and ran afoul of good tech privacy practices and are big mad about it.

in reply to ɔiƚoxɘup

He'll get off this charge easy. It's his phone he can do whatever the fuck he wants to do with it. Wiping your phone is not an illegal act.
in reply to FreeBooteR69

If he had received a valid court order to not delete anything on his phone, then doing so could put him in legal trouble. So what you said is not true in general. But most of the time, for almost everyone, almost all of the time, then, yes, it's okay to wipe your phone... And because the article did not mention a court order, we can be sure that there wasn't one.
in reply to ɔiƚoxɘup

If I travel to the US next time to visit family, I’m thinking of getting a burner phone and also leave my iPad at home. It will be a boring flight but I don’t feel safe otherwise. Shit country.
in reply to ClassifiedPancake

You can just reset the iPad when your plane lands. Then you can restore it from backup once you are at your destination.
in reply to B0rax

"Why did you reset your iPad? Were you hiding secret Antifa plans in it? Off to Guantanamo Bay!"
in reply to ClassifiedPancake

"Sorry, mate. Work policy. We deal with confidential patient information, so IT wipes everything on a schedule and we do everything on the cloud. There's never anything on the device."
in reply to ClassifiedPancake

Right to jail.
in reply to ClassifiedPancake

I've read this is what many companies are telling staff that have to travel as well.

It'll certainly be my plan if I ever end up going back someday

in reply to ClassifiedPancake

You can just buy second hand an aging android phone for this task, €50 gets you something usable for basic entertainment purposes.
in reply to ɔiƚoxɘup

I don't see a link here... Is there an article or anything?
in reply to prole

I had to Google the article and I believe it may be paywalled. I sub to 404 media so I am not restricted from seeing it.
in reply to deliriousdreams

archive.is/iAbQ6

The article didn't have an image and when I added . it turned it into a an image post instead of a link post so I fucked up. I'll do better.

in reply to ɔiƚoxɘup

It's wasn't an indictment on you or anything. I tried to click what I thought was a link, figured there was a mistake and then went looking for the actual article to get some context.

Since it was a 404 article I read and I know they do paywalls (and I sub to them so I don't get the paywalls) I didn't want to share that link because people might not be able to view it.

in reply to deliriousdreams

Oh, it should have been! Lol. I had accidentally removed the link. I fixed it since you posted.

Thanks 💛

in reply to prole

archive.is/iAbQ6

The article didn't have an image and when I added . it turned it into a an image post instead of a link post so I fucked up. I'll do better.

in reply to ɔiƚoxɘup

Is there supposed to be an article here or something? What country is this? What was he charged with?
in reply to Ulrich

I'm sorry, I put a link in there but apparently when I added an image, something got fucked up.

archive.is/iAbQ6

Okay, it turned it into an image post when I did that.

I see my mistake now. I'll do better.

This entry was edited (2 days ago)