A U.S. citizen returning through Atlanta allegedly gave customs officers a “duress passcode” that wiped his Android phone instead of unlocking it. Federal prosecutors now say that act amounted to obstruction of justice, raising a fascinating and consequential question for international travelers: how far can you go to protect your digital privacy at the border?
Traveler Faces Federal Charge After “Duress Passcode” Wipes Phone At Atlanta Airport
This sounds like a gadget Q would hand James Bond.
A traveler is stopped at the border and pressured to unlock his phone. Instead of providing the real passcode, he supplies a secondary code that quietly erases everything on the device.
But this is not fiction.
Federal prosecutors in Atlanta have charged Samuel Tunick, a U.S. citizen and Atlanta resident, with obstruction after he allegedly gave customs officers a duress passcode that triggered a complete wipe of his Android phone.
Tunick was stopped for questioning at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on January 24, 2025, while returning from the Dominican Republic. Customs officers seized his phone, and prosecutors allege that the code he provided caused the device’s contents to be erased.
The phone reportedly ran GrapheneOS, an open-source, privacy-focused operating system available for certain Android devices.
How A Duress Passcode Works
A duress passcode is a secondary code configured in advance.
The normal passcode unlocks the phone. The duress code may appear to do the same thing, but instead initiates a factory reset or destroys encryption keys, rendering the data inaccessible.
The hardware remains intact. The information stored on it does not.
That distinction is central to the prosecution. The government’s theory is that the physical phone was merely the container. Officers had asserted authority to seize the data inside it, and entering the duress code was an intentional act designed to destroy that evidence.
The federal statute being used carries a maximum penalty of five years in prison, along with a potential fine.
Prosecutors do not necessarily have to prove that the erased data itself reflected a crime. The obstruction allegation rests on whether Tunick intentionally destroyed information to prevent the government from lawfully obtaining it.
The Border Search Question
The most important issue may be whether the phone search was lawful in the first place.
Border agents exercise unusually broad search powers at airports and other ports of entry. They often search luggage and electronic devices without the warrant that would ordinarily be required elsewhere.
That does not mean citizens have no constitutional protections at an airport, but the government traditionally receives far more latitude at the border, an issue we’ve discussed here before.
Tunick’s lawyers argue that he was targeted because of his opposition to Atlanta’s controversial police and fire training facility, commonly called “Cop City.” They also contend that he was unlawfully detained, was not advised of his rights, and was denied access to counsel.
The government has apparently revealed little about what it was originally investigating, a notable omission. It allows prosecutors to focus on the alleged destruction of data without publicly explaining why Tunick was stopped or what agents expected to find on his phone.
Deleting Your Phone Before Travel Is Different
Timing always matters.
A traveler who wipes a phone before leaving home may plausibly argue that he simply did not want to carry sensitive personal data across an international border.
That is very different from handing officers a code during an active search while knowing it will destroy the information they are attempting to access.
The first act may be characterized as preventative privacy protection. The second may be viewed as intentionally frustrating an imminent government seizure.
That does not resolve whether the underlying search was constitutional, but it explains why prosecutors believe this particular case crossed the line.
A Warning For International Travelers
I find warrantless searches of personal electronic devices deeply troubling.
A modern smartphone may contain years of private messages, photographs, financial records, medical information, travel history, passwords, and confidential work material. Searching a suitcase is intrusive. Searching a phone can expose nearly an entire life.
But travelers should also understand the risk of using a destructive duress feature once border agents have seized a device and demanded access.
Refusing to provide a passcode raises its own legal questions. Providing a code that actively deletes the contents is potentially far more dangerous.
The safest privacy strategy may be the least cinematic one: travel with as little sensitive data as possible, log out of accounts, and keep important material stored securely elsewhere rather than relying upon a self-destruct mechanism at the inspection desk.
CONCLUSION
Federal prosecutors have charged a U.S. citizen after he allegedly supplied customs officers with a duress passcode that wiped his phone during a border search at Atlanta Airport.
The case may become an important early test of how traditional obstruction laws apply to privacy tools designed to destroy data under pressure.
I remain uneasy about the government’s power to search phones without a warrant at the border. But intentionally triggering a data wipe after officers have already seized the device is a very different act from simply declining to cooperate.
James Bond might get away with it. But an ordinary traveler like Tunick may face five years in federal prison…
image: DHS
Had child porn on it, no other legitimate explanation.
He’s lucky he’s only facing 5 years.
Luck this cheap up for life!
You ‘projecting’ again?
Spoken like someone who has never valued their own privacy… (and, given your ‘work’…) So, basically, you’re just repeating the lame ole trope of: “if you have nothing to hide…”
There are legitimate reasons people protect their data—proprietary business information, medical records, legal communications, financial data, or a fundamental belief in privacy against arbitrary government searches.
In most contexts, if the government wants to search someone’s private property, they can get a warrant like the Constitution requires, rather than relying on a presumption of guilt.
Conflating the desire for basic digital privacy with criminality is how you sleepwalk into a police state.
@1990 – I have been to Singapore (as I’m sure you have) and many call it a “police state”. However, is cameras, agressive police work and strict penalties for those that break the law would make the US as safe as Singapore I’d gladly give up a few “personal freedoms” for the overall better quality of life.
Feel free to move there.
Ah, yes, you advocate for us becoming a ‘benevolent’ dictatorship. That is on-brand for you.
However, in this case, reality is, we’re not an island city-state leeching off our neighbors and international shipping; and Trump is no Lee Kuan Yew.
No, we’re much closer to a lawless feudalistic tech-oligarchy imposing their will on billions around the world through a malignant narcissist madman mafioso, fat little fingers inches away from thousands of nukes.
I grew up in Singapore and always find it’s interpretation by other Americans to be rather interesting. We tend to cling to the punishment side of things as the answer to all of societal problems.
I found the opposite to be true. There are so many social safety nets and supports in place for people to be successful. We call them big government, or today, woke initiatives. Free public education, a public health network that is free as a catch all under private health insurance, substantial taxes and restrictions on anything deemed bad for you by the government, rehabilitation programs for people who have been to jail, substantial welfare programs for the poorest, most disabled, or most disadvantaged, massive subsidized housing programs and public transit to name a few.
The government takes 30% of your paycheck and invests it for you in your retirement. You don’t get to choose where or how it’s invested. Then you’re taxes also pay for the social welfare programs above.
I really don’t think you understand what a few “personal freedoms” you’d be giving up. That comment if critical of the Singaporean government could be considered seditious. If you want to take advantage of any of the many public works that your tax dollars helped pay for, like the very high quality, subsidized public housing, you are subject to racial and religious quotas to ensure that too many of one race or religion do not all live together. And those quotas are by building and by floor. Hell if you want to gamble at the casinos they have on the island, you only get to go a few days per year and you have to pay several hundred dollars to enter. That’s all before we get into the big freedoms of speech, religion, and privacy.
This is incorrect. There are many other explanations.
Correct, it could have been pictures of him with a 3rd world hooker he murdered.
In any case this guy is a piece of human garbage that should be sent to prison.
Amazing how the liberals here defend the clown. I wonder what’s on your phones???
By the way, the only bigger piece of sh#t than this guy is the old bastard sitting in front of the Senate committee right now scared to say anything knowing his lies will send him to prison to get F’d with Tunick.
But let’s first thank Fauci and Trump for what Trump called his greatest triumph…..the Covid Vaccine, Operation Warpspeed!
November 13, 2020. Thank you very much. Thank you. It’s beautiful out here this time of year. In the past nine months, my administration has initiated the single greatest mobilization in U.S. history — pioneering, developing, and manufacturing therapies and vaccines in record time. Numbers like nobody has seen before.
No medical breakthrough of this scope and magnitude has ever been achieved this rapidly, this quickly. And we’re very proud of it, and I had tremendous help from the military — generals, admirals — and many of the great people at the White House.
Operation Warp Speed is unequaled and unrivaled anywhere in the world, and leaders of other countries have called me to congratulate us on what we’ve been able to do
The funny thing is the libs would later force the vaccine on everyone and would heavily punish anyone who objected. Truth is both sides were doing their best based on the lies by one faucci. If you want to place blame there’s your guy. Just look at his diary. His advice ruined millions of lives.
This hearing is just another distraction from the epstein files, which most of those republican senators are probably in.
Fauci is right not to answer any questions from ignorant republicans
No, you misunderstand. There are plenty of perfectly legal, valid, and justifiable reasons. I can provide you some examples upon request.
Gay porn is illegal in much of the world. You have no leg to stand on lecturing anybody about laws you criminal deviant
I don’t know who you’re arguing with? Republicans haven’t accomplished anything except making everything demonstrably worse. So as you smile through paying more for literally everything while stuck a toilet because of poor food quality, just remember Republicans control everything right now.
This from the socialist who doesn’t like free markets or capalism as noted in his other whiney airline upgrade posts. Take your faux outraged feckless nonsese somewhere else and quit licking boots.
Highly unlikely, he is not a Republican.
Zing! Got’em!
Kyle – is this type of comment why your family doesn’t like to talk to you, and you’re stuck spewing garbage online for people that don’t care if you live or die?
Oh, thanks. That will save us time, money, and effort without violating the Constitution. In fact, why don’t we just ask you what everyone who has an encounter with law enforcement is guilty of? That would be so much easier. No more need for lawyers, judges, pre-sentencing detainment facilities and all of the personnel required to maintain them. Who needs their day in court? We’ll just ask The Sage, Mr. Prescott. Constitution? Psh! What a nuisance! What were the Founders thinking?
Judging a man with no evidence or reason? Quite the irony given your present – not just your past. The irony being far more than the gay porn aspect. A quick google search of Kyle Prescott and everyone will learn. I hope Michigan is treating you well after your grifting Vegas debacle?
Huh, interesting, because when the Secret Service deleted all its January 6, 2021, data that was totally fine. So, state-level data destruction is excused as administrative mishap or system migration, while individual-level data protection is prosecuted as a criminal felony. Nice double-standard we got there… /s
It’s pretty simple. It’s clear they were targeting him without cause and aware of his arrival (or someone recognized his name as to the opposition to Cop City. Release the information as to why. If they don’t it’s because they had no cause and were just harassing him. If there was legitimate suspicion of illegal activity they would have already presented that. Seems pretty clear that there wasn’t. Sorry, the border is not a no mans land of proper conduct when dealing with citizens (or even visitors). Good for him in defending his privacy.
I predict that Tunick, like the vindictive prosecution of David Hearn, the ex-Olympian at the Reflecting Pool, and many other cases like these, are going to end with the government failing, and a settlement in-favor of those they wrongly prosecuted. At least that’s my hope. If this administration pardoned all the J6ers, even the violent offenders, why should these absurd cases even proceed? It’s a PR-stunt; a deflection; and a waste of our taxpayer funds.
Meant to say lock this creep up for life!
Lock up the CBP officers? Ok, you’re the boss!
You should be locked up you deviant
This is one way to make your phone into a civil informant. We don’t know the true intention or the actual target of this intelligence gathering.
Is Kyle Prescott real? Or just some doofus trying to stir the pot?
As real as they come, feel free to look up my work with Colt Studios, but not at work, lol.
I call out the elites here for their crazy liberal takes. Most, but not all, here feel they are better than the average American who they feel is inferior to them. And believe most could never be as successful as them because they are special.
Meanwhile I came from nothing, did what it took to become successful and realize anyone can do it. I’m no one special.
You’re doing a lot of self-projecting, sweetheart.
Yeah, the powers that be in the Trump orbit ARE the elites they pretend to hate. They are the ones taking private jets on taxpayer dimes and Trump is the one who used his power of office to make billions for himself / his family, including $1.4 billion in crypto.
Kyle is an anti-capitalist. He whines in many threads when airlines operate on the free market selling ugrades and providing shareholder value. He is a socialist against free markets and business and, again, constantly whines about it. His homosexuality is not the issue, but his anti free-market rants are.
If you don’t have anything to hide then no problem. Obviously he had something on there he didn’t want the government to see (and that they can likely get anyway now under a warrant from him cloud storage service). The broad freedom to search at border entry has been around for a very long time and something both parties have used so let’s don’t get into a TDS meltdown on this one.
Thank you again for the best common sense take around here.
Hopefully during the next administration they throw you in prison for nothing other than being a conservative. See how you like it
I let the Border Gestapo search my phone without protest, because I have nothing to hide.
The government set-up facial- and licence-plate recognition cameras on every street corner, but I didn’t worry because I have nothing to hide.
The FBI and NSA were given unlimited powers to conduct warrantless surveillance on all voice-calls and interet data, but there are terrorists and pedophiles everywhere these days, and I’m not one of those so I have nothing to hide.
Today the government installed audiovisual surveillance in every room of every house on our street. The agent in charge explained that it’s a strategy to reduce domestic/family violence crime and improve civil harmony, and that people like us needn’t worry because we have nothing to hide.
If he’s smart enough to set up his phone with Graphene, he’s probably smart enough to not have readily readable versions of his sensitive data on a cloud service. Also, even if he did use a cloud service, the govt would have to justify the warrant at this point and figure out which cloud service he was using– someone using that OS isn’t using MS OneDrive. Effectively obscuring the service you use might take some effort, but I suppose it could be done.
Sounds like an illegal search.
Reasonable legal analysis, so I think the questions will be whether the CBP legally had even temporary custody of the phone, and if so, whether he intentionally caused the data to delete after the phone was in the possession of the CBP. If so, that was a crime, and I do not have a problem with that. That said, getting the maximum of 5 years (or even getting any time in prison) is unlikely barring other facts. Generally, follow the reasonable instructions of cops. The opposite never ends well.
And who would cross any border these days with sensitive information (at least more than the usual stuff) on an electronic device? I don’t trust any country in that regard.
Bravo, Samuel Tunick, a true American hero. Bravo too to the GrapheneOS folks who thoughtfully (and it appears very successfully) anticipated the need for this feature and implemented it. Sounds like it worked flawlessly.
My phone is an iPhone…does anyone know if this or an equivalent feature works on those?
There’s conflicting case law, but a lot of courts say a person cannot be compelled to give up their passcode (violates 5th amendment right against self-incrimination). Forcing you to use biometric ID (face or fingerprint) is allowed-that’s why you see lawyer videos saying don’t use biometric ID on devices.
I think if he had just refused to give up his password, he’d be in a better position legally, but causing the phone to be wiped after law enforcement has it sounds like obstruction to me.
CBP is obviously trying to make a point. They definitely don’t want this to go before a judge, and they assume he’ll take a plea.
All the more reason this ought to go to trial.
Anything that makes the job of CBP and ICE harder is per se a good thing.
The most interesting thing to me about this is that in the end of all of this the only person who will know if wiping the phone was worth it, is Tunick himself.
Seems that there is a decent chance that he’ll face some penalty for this, and even if he doesn’t, his life will be upended for quite a while and he’ll pay some hefty legal fees.
If his data was something really inappropriate, this is probably the best thing he’s ever done. A few year sentence for obstruction is better than a lifetime as a registered sex offender.
On the other hand, if what he was protecting was a series of cat memes and texts saying “I’m on my way”, then this will be a pretty dumb hill to take a big personal stand on.
Also, I’d be really interested to know what Tunick admitted to (if anything).
My claim would be that the phone had been glitchy recently, crashing/freezing, unstable, needing to reboot it, etc… I provided the correct code when asked, and either the phone broke, or the CBP agents broke it after taking possession of the phone.
I get that this isn’t a perfectly solid position to maintain, but it’s a better position than admitting to providing a duress code.
I might’ve missed this detail. I understand he was stopped for questioning. Questioning about what? What was the ‘probable cause’? Did it have to do w/suspected activity on his phone? If not (& I’m not a lawyer, but I didn’t grow up in Nazi Germany), then the phone is his property and unless LE had a reason to seize it, they can fuck right off.
If he was pre-selected because he had child p@rn or clearly illegal info on the phone, that’s different.
Am I missing something? Or did I wake up and forget my fucking pink triangle again?
The very idea that the guy was supposed to save evidence that he committed some crime or other is ludicrous and also clearly violates The Fifth Amendment and very possibly The Fourth as well.
Everyone has a legitimate reason for not allowing someone to search their phone, the contents are none of your effing business. Without a warrant the police are fishing for a crime. In my opinion, the agents are the ones to erased the contents. Is there a law against giving someone the wrong code? Obstruction? I’m sure the defendant did t say use this code. The officers did that on their own volition with their big bad guns and police powers. Kick rocks
If I was on the jury anyone who wiped their phone when asked or told to give it to a Customs agent at the border would walk free. Fat chance I would get on the jury.