Is it illegal to trick the US government into wiping your phone during a questionably legal search?
But Tunick’s attorneys argue that the search “was a pretext for a fishing expedition” into his connections with the Stop Cop City protests in Atlanta, in which dozens of people were charged under state RICO laws, which were later dismissed. A few protesters are still facing domestic terrorism and arson cases.According to a motion to suppress evidence filed in March, Tunick didn’t consent to a search and repeatedly asked to speak to his attorney, but CBP officers told him they didn’t need a warrant to search his phone. Tunick ultimately gave the agents the password to his phone, but when they entered it, “the screen went blank, flashed several times and the phone appeared to restart,” court records say.
- ▪But Tunick’s attorneys argue that the search “was a pretext for a fishing expedition” into his connections with the Stop Cop City protests in Atlanta, in which dozens of people were charged under state RICO laws, which were later dismissed.
- ▪A few protesters are still facing domestic terrorism and arson cases.According to a motion to suppress evidence filed in March, Tunick didn’t consent to a search and repeatedly asked to speak to his attorney, but CBP officers told him they
- ▪Tunick ultimately gave the agents the password to his phone, but when they entered it, “the screen went blank, flashed several times and the phone appeared to restart,” court records say.
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| Original publisher | The Verge |
| Canonical URL | https://www.theverge.com/report/972146/cbp-phone-search-airport-duress-password |
| Publication time | 2026-07-28T15:35:00-04:00 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-07-28T19:35:33.821Z |
| Last seen | 2026-07-28T19:35:33.821Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
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| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | 2j1c-MsTD3eI · 1 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
ReportCloseReportPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All ReportPolicyClosePolicyPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All PolicyTechCloseTechPosts from this topic will be added to your daily email digest and your homepage feed.FollowFollowSee All TechIs it illegal to trick the US government into wiping your phone during a questionably legal search?The case of a traveler who allegedly entered a ‘duress password’ to wipe his phone raises a legal question with no easy answers.The case of a traveler who allegedly entered a ‘duress password’ to wipe his phone raises a legal question with no easy answers.by Gaby Del ValleCloseGaby Del VallePolicy ReporterPosts from…
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