Mastodawn

For people who are concerned about having their devices seized at US airports starting Monday when ICE "assists" the TSA, EFF has this guide: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/06/journalist-security-checklist-preparing-devices-travel-through-us-border

A Journalist Security Checklist: Preparing Devices for Travel Through a US Border

We wrote this checklist to help journalists prepare for transit through a U.S. port of entry while preserving the confidentiality of your most sensitive information, such as unpublished reporting materials or source contact information. It’s important to think about your strategy in advance, and begin planning which options in this checklist make sense for you.

Electronic Frontier Foundation

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d3adpaul 22h ago

@evacide duress codes, play dumb "It was working when I handed it to you,. my password is my DOB..what did you do officer? why is my phone broken?"

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Orca 🌻 | 🎀 | 🪁 | 🏴🏳️‍⚧️22h ago

@d3adpaul @evacide
That would be good, if there isn't a thing "tampering of evidence".
Duress code is good only for wiping your device before they lay hands on your device.

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LukefromDC 14h ago

@Orca @evacide @d3adpaul

I do not place myself in enemy hands voluntarily (this is why I do not use the airlines, travel internationally, or even enter bag search buildings) and I will never peacefully hand over a computer or a phone. I see this given my position as the obligation of any soldier not to hand over classified military equipment to any member of an enemy army.

If I had a phone in Enemy hands with remote wipe capability in the absence of Google Play and a Google Account, I would wipe it even if this meant a 100% chance of an indictment. Better to take one for the team than let other people get raided, same as when I risked my own life by burning a grand jury subpeona in front of the courthouse.

When I had a phone pass through enemy hands in 2017, it was returned to me, but I presumed it rigged to capture the encryption passphrase so they could decrypt a copied image of the filesystem. I refused to boot it, instead smashing it to bits and disposing of the pieces.

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Orca 🌻 | 🎀 | 🪁 | 🏴🏳️‍⚧️6h ago

@LukefromDC @evacide @d3adpaul
If you want to wipe your device (either using "factory reset" feature or with the duress feature you set, doesn't matter), wipe it before you're served a search warrant, instead of relying on cops to trigger the wipe by offering the duress password to the cops.
Wiping it beforehand, you have "oh I was testing something on this phone and it went very bad", a plausible reason for the phone to be in a broken state w/ all data unreadable. Wiping it in front of the cops, you throw yourself into prison due to evidence tampering for no reason or benefit compared to the former situation. (Well unless you didn't get a chance to do the former)

This is what I meant. I don't mean "don't wipe your device", I mean "if you want to wipe your device, wipe it before the cops get your devices if you can, because doing it afterwards is legally risky".
Relying on cops to trigger duress wipe then playing dumb is extremely risky advice that can get people behind bars while they're not expecting it (unlike you, maybe). You're willing to wipe your device in front of cops and serve time in jail so your comrades won't be captured? Good for you. But suggesting that to the general public? Bad idea. (Also I'm not suggesting that solidarity is a bad thing here.)

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LukefromDC

@Orca @evacide @d3adpaul Remember that I am NOT talking from a civilian viewpoint here but rather as a combatant against an oppressive regime.

The rules are completely different if you have reason to believe information in your phone could expose others to arrest and prison. In today's US environment, a contact list of other activists who do candelight vigils is quite enough to trigger this concern.