U.S. citizen faces felony after wiping phone at border
A U.S. citizen now faces a federal felony charge after allegedly wiping his phone’s data during a Customs interrogation in Atlanta, a novel case covered by the New York Times that tests whether privacy tools can become a crime at the border. Prosecutors say Samuel Tunick used a GrapheneOS duress passcode; his lawyers say agents violated his rights.
Key Takeaways
- Samuel Tunick faces a federal charge after allegedly wiping his phone at Atlanta’s airport in January 2025.
- Prosecutors cite a statute barring destroying property to stop a government seizure.
- Defense lawyers say the phone wipe followed an unlawful, pretextual interrogation.
- Experts say this may be the first case targeting GrapheneOS’s duress wipe feature.
- A ruling on suppressing evidence is not expected before late October.
The episode, also reported by The Guardian and Yahoo Tech, sits at the crossroads of border search power, protest surveillance, and consumer privacy tech—topics regularly tracked on our Fintech & Crypto Alerts hub.
What happened at Atlanta’s airport?
According to court filings and coverage, Tunick was returning from the Dominican Republic on Jan. 24, 2025, when agents pulled him aside at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Federal authorities had placed him on a terrorism watchlist over alleged ties to protests against Atlanta’s “Cop City” police training center.
Agents conducted a secondary inspection and pressed him about child sexual abuse images. Tunick’s public defenders argue those questions were “a pretext for a fishing expedition” into his activism. He asked to speak with a lawyer four times and was refused, according to hearing testimony cited by The Guardian. Agents produced no warrant and did not read him his rights, the defense says.
After repeated demands for his passcode—and warnings the phone would be seized—Tunick provided a code. The screen went blank, flashed, and the device appeared to restart, filings say.
Why is wiping a phone a felony charge?
The Justice Department is prosecuting Tunick under a little-known federal statute that makes it a crime to knowingly destroy or damage property to prevent it from being seized. The indictment alleges the code deleted the phone’s digital contents before seizure.
Tunick’s phone ran GrapheneOS, a privacy-focused Android alternative for Google Pixel devices. Its optional duress password irreversibly wipes the device (and installed eSIMs) when entered instead of the unlock code. Cybersecurity experts told The Guardian they had not seen a similar prosecution aimed at that operating system, calling the approach concerning for privacy-minded users.
Digital security expert Runa Sandvik told TechCrunch, as relayed by Yahoo Tech, that the case is a reminder authorities may treat data deletion as knowing destruction—and that travelers may be safer not carrying sensitive data across certain borders.
Do border searches suspend your usual rights?
That constitutional clash is the defense’s core fight. Lawyers moved to suppress evidence from the stop, including the wipe itself, arguing the interrogation violated Tunick’s rights. Government attorneys and airport agents countered that it was a routine international-arrival inspection “looking for anything that’s prohibited,” as one CBP officer put it in court.
The first hearing on the suppression motion has already been held. A judge’s decision is expected to take at least until the end of October, according to The Guardian.
Privacy advocates warn the case could chill use of security tools by journalists, lawyers, and activists. Atlanta Solidarity Fund member Marlon Kautz said people have a right to secure private data against unconstitutional searches—especially amid rising authoritarianism. Coverage from the New York Times and peers leaves one question open: when does protecting your phone cross into a federal crime?