When Samuel Tunick landed at Hartsfield-Jackson on January 24, 2025, handing CBP agents his phone’s passcode seemed routine — until the screen went blank, the device flashed, restarted, and the data vanished. The Atlanta resident and American citizen had given border officers a passcode for his Google Pixel. But this wasn’t a regular unlock code. According to prosecutors, it was a duress passcode, a feature of GrapheneOS that wipes the device clean instead of opening it. This case echoes broader concerns around surveillance app deployments targeting activists in cross-border contexts.
The Justice Department charged Tunick under 18 U.S.C. § 2232(a), which criminalizes destroying property during a lawful search or seizure and carries up to five years in prison. He pleaded not guilty. Security experts say this prosecution appears to be the first of its kind.
A Privacy OS Built for People Who Need It Most
GrapheneOS is the Signal of mobile operating systems — and its signature feature just became Exhibit A.
Think of GrapheneOS as a hardened Android fork built specifically for journalists, activists, and anyone who can’t afford a data breach. The duress passcode is a deliberate feature, not a loophole. One detail worth noting: CBP agents themselves typed in the code that triggered the wipe. That complicates the government’s “destruction of property” theory considerably.
“I have not seen this before, though I’ve discussed the potential scenario with activists and journalists over the years,” said Runa Sandvik, founder of security consultancy Granitt.
Tunick’s defense team argues the seizure was unlawful from the start. His attorneys say CBP:
- denied him access to a lawyer
- never informed him of his rights
- used child-exploitation concerns as a pretext
The real target, according to the motion to suppress: his association with Defend the Atlanta Forest, the environmental movement opposing Atlanta’s planned “Cop City” law enforcement training complex.
CBP agents also asserted they needed no warrant because Tunick had not yet legally crossed the border — a position reflecting the government’s long-standing claim of broad search authority at ports of entry. Assistant federal public defender Matthew Dodge called the statute’s application here “incredibly rare.”
What This Means for Your Phone When You Travel
The smarter move isn’t a last-second wipe — it’s crossing the border with nothing worth finding.
Sandvik’s advice cuts through the noise: “With a little planning ahead of time, you can always download the data you need once you get to where you’re going.” Practical approaches include:
- travel phones
- cloud-based workflows
- pre-departure wipes with post-arrival restores
The Electronic Frontier Foundation maintains similar guidance on protecting data at the border, emphasizing minimal local storage over in-situ countermeasures. Concerns about government access to devices have also fueled reports of apps secretly tracking users without consent.
The indictment itself — which misspells the country as “Untied States” — reads like a warning shot aimed at anyone relying on privacy tools under pressure.
The Atlanta federal court’s ruling on the suppression motion is expected later this year. If the government’s theory survives, activating a built-in phone feature during a border search becomes criminal obstruction for every traveler carrying a locked device through U.S. customs. That’s not a niche activist problem. That’s everyone’s problem.
