graphene OS with duress PIN, but you don't give them the PIN - you write it on a slip of paper that you put between the phone and the case. Now, whoever takes your phone without consent has a good chance of finding your bait and wiping it clean for you.
For the last couple of years, we have traveled with burners and left our primary phones at home. Old phone models are surprisingly capable and cheap.
This is what I plan on doing.
Fucking fascists. 🖕🤬🖕
I cut out the middle man and just switched to the old models permanently. I don't need a smart phone, not f it's spying on me.
This is a fabulous idea!
You can also wipe your existing phone and restore your info from a back up after you return.
The main reason I didn't go with this approach is because if they decide to take it, I'm out of a phone. If they take my cheap burner, it served its purpose.
That makes perfect sense.
But, to wipe a computer, you have to delete, then write new information over it. Deleting just deletes the references or whatever to the information.
Factory reset - you can tie the phone to a blank cloud account easily, then switch back to your main cloud account with another factory reset when you are home and safe. Just an option for people who want to keep their device for the trip. Usually your main phone will have a really good camera and other capabilities burners don’t.
If you’re using encryption you should be good.
Is there currently any way on android of getting a local backup and restoring it after a factory reset? It seems access to application data is so limited, you're stuck with whatever backup functionality the specific devs chose for their app.
Whatever your device supports. Every Android variant (Samsung, Lineage, Graphene) supports something different. I don't think AOSP has any native tools.
Unless you root and use whatever you want.
It seems my phone supports backing up through the Google account. So no local backups and only some apps appear in the list. If it's the same as when changing to a new phone that's pretty inadequate.
Could get a burner and then back it all up to a zip file send it to yourself in an email and then recover it later on. Factory reset your phone before you leave the country and don't log in to Google, give the phone to a homeless when you come back to the US after clearing security. Lmfao
The question is what to put in the zip. Do you have to use each app's backup mechanism (if it exists) and gather the files yourself? This works I guess but it's very time consuming.
People hate on iPhones a lot but damn do they make this easy. Plug into computer, click “make encrypted image backup.” Wipe phone and set up as new.
Go to other place and use phone as normal. Take all data that’s needed once you’re back at home and upload to encrypted online storage. Wipe phone before traveling back.
Plug phone into computer at home. Click on “make phone the same as it was before I left.” Phone is now the same as it was before you wiped it the first time.
Huh and it seems you can even do it locally and without a Mac. That's a nice feature.
Yus, I don’t use cloud backups for any phone stuff. I hate iTunes but it does work on windows for a local, encrypted, incremental backup, so that’s all I use it for. You can definitely do the same with Android devices, but iPhones do make it incredibly simple. If you get another iPhone, any type of iPhone, even eight years old (maybe older?), you can plug it into your computer and enter your encryption password to make your new (or old, used, wiped phone) exactly the same as the one you replaced.
we kinda had the opposite issue. apple accounts became impossible without an ios device. its one of the reasons we moved away from osx.
laughs in grapheneos
Laughs when you are in jail for giving the incorrect password. /s
Not really laughing but there was a recent incident on this.
I heard about that. Seems like the case would be thrown out but I didn't follow up on what happened.
Case might have been thrown out but you still have to be in jail and hire a lawyer.
Yeah that's definitely something I'm trying to avoid
Graphene does zip zero zilch to address a single word of snowdens leaks. That shit was the radio firmware and we all said sure ok guess that stays a black box. Your privacy os protects you from advertising companies, not the government.
If we are going to name something and say it's a problem like there is something that exists elsewhere, but not giving information about what that solution entails is not constructive nor useful. Did graphene make the claim they have resolved the issue? Has anything else? If not why single it out? If it's one of the better options out there at least fighting towards the goal of being more secure and it does exactly that then why the hate?
For as many people there are blindly slobbing all over grapheneos knob there are an equal amount of more blind haters.
While there is no currently not a complete solution officially released and on by default from grapheneos it does however, include:
The issue is right now isn't graphene or any other competitor but a radio hardware issue to resolve further, which means no one has much better if at all. So while not complete or perfect it is however as far as I know one of the best attempts out there. For the US at least the FCC must explicitly approve whatever new hardware design they come up with using whatever hardware partner such as Motorola for radio fabrication. Currently Motorola Mobile (and not their evil sister company they split from who more likely does have patents) to my understanding does not have patents in this space which brings up another ma to or hurdle as the big dogs who design radios have anyone's balls in a vice grip that tries to enter it with lawsuit after lawsuit. Then we have the carriers own testing. Not saying this is impossible, but from the standpoint of graphene or any other security minded OS this is out of scope and just not realistic to ask of them. At least that was the case in the past. There is possible opportunity with the Motorola Mobile partnership, but I would not expect this in the first release.
GOS has good broadband isolation, and can actually switch the cellular radio off.
Reminder to factory reset your phone before handing it over the authorities.
Wasn't a guy persecuted for using kill switch just for that?
Yep, specifically for ~~entering~~ providing the duress password for the ICEstapo agent to into his phone that had GrapheneOS on it to wipe it before ~~handing it over to~~ it was taken by the authorities.
Which led to DHS/CBP prosecuting him for "evidence tampering".
I'd still rather wipe my phone than openly give it to authorities. Guy should have had a better lawyer. Being arrested for evidence tampering when there is no crime is practically the same as being arrested with the only charge being resisting arrest. Good lawyer gets that case thrown out.
I'm pretty sure the LEO entered the password, he just provided it.
I mean they didn't specify which PIN they wanted, just that he hand over the PIN for his phone and that he could not speak to anyone (lawyer, someone that knows his rights, etc). I don't know your definition of duress, but that situation fits mine and I would have given them the same PIN.
The border bitches asked a poorly worded question, made assumptions about the answer, and proceeded to wipe his phone and blame him for it.
I 100% agree and I didn't even think about the vagueness of their question given the possible responses.
I was just clarifying that the Leo's entered the password, not him.
He's going to be prosecuted, whether he's found guilty and what he's found guilty of is still TBD
The government can search your butthole if it wants.
Is this limited to phones or any device? (Laptop / gaming handheld)
In the US it's any electronic device, not just phones. CBP's own rules (Directive 3340-049A, from 2018) define it broadly: laptops, tablets, cameras, hard drives, game consoles, anything that stores data.
The directive splits searches into two kinds:
One detail that's useful for planning: the directive says officers are only supposed to search what's stored on the device itself, not data that lives only in the cloud, and they're meant to ask you to disable network connectivity first. So something that just syncs from a server once you're home (and isn't cached locally) is in a different position from files on the disk. Courts in different circuits have also ruled differently on how much suspicion is needed, so it's not entirely settled.
Thanks for explanation.
A community for Lemmy users interested in privacy
Rules: