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Comment by reenorap | Hacker News Reader

Have the duress PIN on sticker on your phone. Maybe put it backwards and don’t say anything to border patrol. Have them try it out and erase the phone and then you can legitimately say you didn’t do anything and they did it themselves.

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But if the prosecutors can make a convincing argument that your intent was exactly that all along, then you may end up convicted anyway.

Intent matters. It might be hard to prove, but it matters.

It may not even be that hard; what other possible explanation is there for someone putting a PIN visible on their phone that wipes it while crossing a border?

As a speech.

"it would be funny if the border police typed it in to my phone"

I think you should read the other reply about not saying anything at all.

Not saying anything at all is one of the worst things you can do when questioned by law enforcement in the US (though "it would be funny" is a close second). The right way to remain silent is to loudly proclaim "I am exercising my right to remain silent."

For if someone steals the phone?

> what other possible explanation is there for someone putting a PIN visible on their phone that wipes it while crossing a border?

Two obvious answers:

1. It's for the general case of lost/stolen phone.

2. It's for the owner. I can't remember numbers I don't type in, might as well keep it visible on the device.

There’s no way to prove intent if you keep your mouth shut and don’t answer anything.

Yea, that’s not how it works in practice. If they catch you standing over a dead body holding the murder weapon. Then you can’t just say they can’t prove intent if you keep your mouth shut.

Yea but that's where "reasonable suspicion" comes in a court of law. If you are standing next to a dead body, with a bloody knife in your hand.

And doing anything non-standard with your phone is going to shift the reasonable suspicion away from favoring you unless you can explain yourself.

That’s good advice to not talk, but it won’t necessarily save you.

They might be able to convict on that, but that sets a dangerous precedent imo, which is that doing anything preemptively to prevent searches is conviction worthy, including the preparation the OP suggested.

if the cops do that, they're breaking the law with that search already

theyll have a hard time showing that you intended for the government to break the law. first the government would have to admit breaking the law

Unfortunately I think they have pretty wide latitude to perform searches at border crossings.

claim your password to be some derivative of the duress PIN, for example: 1234 is password reminder for 2444 (one 2 three 4), the device is erased anyway.

>what other possible explanation is there for someone putting a PIN visible on their phone that wipes it while crossing a border?

For thieves, obviously.

Or just make it your birthday. Though I'm not at all sure the agents will try typing random codes in without at least some idea that they may work, given that many OS's will quickly start to punish with tarpitting.

Be funnier if you even write “do not enter 123456”.

That might have actually been legal. I'm not a lawyer, but it's definitely better for the accused than what happened in reality.

"I told you not to. You're the ones who wiped my phone. You owe me money for destroying my personal property."

I'm not saying you would get a check courtesy of Uncle Sam for your troubles, but the argument that you deceived authorities into destroying evidence is a lot weaker.

I might go with "do not enter 696969" instead because the stranger fiddling with your phone probably expects a your phone to do something funny, like load a shock site.

The police will ask you if the PIN unlocks the phone before using it.

Refusing to answer questions IS one of the rights that the US government mostly honors.

Well, these days especially at border police don't care about "rights"

That's missing in this entire conversation. This all sounds like it's 2016 or something

This is not a "these days" thing. Most rights essentially being abrogated at the border is a thing we've had for many decades now. In particular, no non-citizen has the absolute right of entry, and border agents have discretion bordering on insane when it comes to not admitting people or temporarily detaining them. Worse yet, this being the case, the job attracts the kind of people who relish the petty power trip. I've seen this many times back in 2010-2011 when I was traveling regularly as a non-citizen between US and Canada.

I don't think denying entry to non-citizens abrogates anyone's rights.

What gives US americans the right to deny anyone access to the land they stole from the indigenous they genocided? Why do people think they are entitled to take other peoples land and then prevent others from coming too?

What gives the Turks the right to land they stole from the Tatars? What gives the Greeks the right to land they stole from the Creteans? What gives the Chinese the right to land they stole from the other Chinese?

At some point, we have to accept that the world has irrevocably changed, that people have lived where they live for generations, that resettling them all is impractical, inhumane and just not a good idea in general, and just move on and build the best world for the people currently here.

During WW1 and then again during WW2, the world has agreed to the right of self-determination. If people feel they're a certain nationality separate from what their government imposes on them, then they have a right to become their own country with their own laws and their own border enforcement. If you are literally asking what gives Americans the right to prevent others from coming, this is it.

I'm not saying to remove all americans but why the fuck would you have the right to exclude others from a certain piece of the earth?

Because that's how the world works everywhere.

Under US law, you have a nearly absolute right to not answer police questions.

Yes of course. But their use of the PIN will likely only occur if you answer, which many people will. This is a common setup in interrogations.

the utah cops definitely would, based on whats been released from the rwckless ben bodycam footage

I belive this only applies if you are a US citizen and not a visitor.

Up in the air. SCOTUS didn't decide on this specific right. They did rule on other constitutional protections though, sometimes granting, sometimes denying them to non-citizens. It also depends if you're just arriving or already are in the US. For example, illegal immigrants who jumped the border fence have more rights than legal immigrants who didn't leave the airport yet.

It unlocks the phone.

I wouldn't write it down, I would just make it 1234. They're bound to try that. Then they have absolutely no case against you.

That's the combination on my luggage!

Why would agents think that a number written on your phone is the PIN? That would only make sense if it was a communally-used device, not a personal one. Also, no one would put sensitive info on a devices that has the PIN affixed to it.

I suppose it's possible someone might enter it without thinking, but the odds seem low. Also seems risky to put a self-destruct PIN on your device, lest a friend (or enemy) enter it by accident or as a prank.

with this sort of configuration, you either trust your backups or you don’t ;)

I've worked with fleets of company phones and mobile devices, people absolutely do this.

They do this with devices that have sensitive information that would be of interest to federal agents?

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