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Comment by pavel_lishin | Hacker News Reader

The "agent entered password themselves, therefore they're to blame" seems as good of a logic as "I'm going to start swinging my arms and start walking forward, so if you don't move, it's YOU hitting YOURSELF".

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Maybe digital forensics shouldn't be handled by barely highschool graduates at a busy border crossing

Should we take the same approach for physical searches? If the cops are executing a search warrant on a house, and there's a safe, should they send in a safe cracker on the off chance the safe is wired with a "duress pin" (eg. thermite that burns the contents)?

I mean, if it's possible to configure and there is at all a reason for someone to configure it as such, then it makes the most sense to treat it as a very valid possibility, right?

Hindsight is 20/20 right? Sure, the duress pin feature was around for years, but so was the technology to set up a thermite boobytrap in a safe. Maybe now CBP officers should be more careful about entering random pins people gave them, but snarky remarks like "Maybe digital forensics shouldn't be handled by barely highschool graduates at a busy border crossing" are entirely unjustified.

It is not snarky, it's the truth. Suspending the constitution within 100 miles of every port of entry? Nah son, the government can conduct their petty investigations with a warrant and proper digital forensics if they want to search your property.

>Nah son, the government can conduct their petty investigations with a warrant

Your original post:

>Maybe digital forensics shouldn't be handled by barely highschool graduates at a busy border crossing

Sounds like you're moving the goalposts from "haha CBP agents are dumb" to "they should get warrants".

Both can be true!

Isn't this already done? Don't they send narcotics back to a lab? And do sobriety tests back at the station if you refuse a field test?

>Don't they send narcotics back to a lab?

1. They do field tests before sending to a lab

2. They're sending it to a lab to ensure the results are accurate, not to guard against an off chance something is boobytrapped.

That's egregiously disingenuous. Having a password that protects the infiltration/extraction of your intellectual artifacts is in no way akin to assault on someone else.

A duress password isn't a booby trap. Nothing was damaged except for the fragile egos of the man-children who weren't able to bully someone into giving up their wrong-think.

The point isn't that giving a duress pin is the same as physical assault, or that the duress pin feature is a "booby trap". It's that for the purposes of ascertaining guilt, you don't get a pass just because you're not the person that physically initiated the action.

Easily illustrated with the comparison to burning a piece of paper with evidence in front of an officer trying to obtain it. Though even though the “guilt” there is the burner’s, that there is any guilt to assign at all depends on whether the law had jurisdiction to that paper in that situation.

Knowingly obstructing investigations is illegal even if there isn't an active search warrant

>During the fall of Enron, Arthur Andersen, Enron's accounting firm, instructed its employees to destroy documents relating to Enron after Andersen officials learned they would soon be investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Andersen_LLP_v._United_...

The conviction was overturned, but only on procedural grounds

Mmm, having an example here is good. I was thinking about how in larger cases like this it would be almost certainly always agreeable that the party disposing of evidence is at least somewhat aware of their guilt and that the act is obstruction regardless of warrant.

But, let’s say somebody unknowingly has evidence to a case, then in the time it takes for law enforcement to retrieve it, accidentally or otherwise destroys it, but necessarily not knowing that it was any sort of evidence. Would a case hold up in that situation if law decides to pin it on the person in question? Personally, I think situationally, it should not, but I don’t know how much faith I have that that would be the case.

Anyways, pertaining to the topic - in the same spirit of case-by-case, I’m not surprised by the outcome even if I’m glad the functionality worked here.

Then construct a better analogy, or better yet don’t rely on one at all

enough metaphors though. Here is what I think probably actually happened, based on the multiple accounts I've read:

"Give us the PIN for your phone"

"I don't want you to search my phone, and I want to talk to my lawyer"

"If you don't comply, you're going to be in a lot of trouble"

"Can I please just go, I don't want to answer questions or be searched"

"If you don't comply we will seize your phone and detain you indefinitely until we can unlock your phone!"

"I want my lawyer."

"Just tell us the PIN and you'll be on your way. Otherwise it's gonna be bad."

"Look if I have no choice my PIN is 1234, but I don't want you searching my phone without my lawyer present."

...

"Hey! We tried to search your phone and the phone wiped itself! You're going to prison for destruction of evidence!"

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