What a pointless point to make. I’ll spell it out for you: related within a generation or two. There are no twins in my family that I know of for several generations, for example. Thus I would say I’m not related to any twins because I’m not in any meaningful way, even if there might be twins somewhere in my ancestral history.
If you mean that all humans are related, that is true but a completely useless fact in this context.
The walls are thick, and no one can access the front door of an apartment without going through that of the building first. I still prefer a house though, with a thick hedge around the lawn isolating you from the world. The real privacy downside with apartments is the windows, as they might be facing other apartments or the street.
The door situation is more so security than privacy IMO. The common setup in the US is we drive right into our garage and nobody even sees us enter or exit our car, depending on garage location I suppose. I guess it’s easier to watch a house and know who lives there and see there comings and going than an apartment where you don’t know which apartment people are coming or going from. I was thinking more so about privacy from neighbors wrt noises through the wall, ceiling, or floor.
Come to think of it, Smells also get shared in many apartments.
Where I live in the Pacific Northwest we all have garages but nobody parks their cars in them. Cars wind up parked in front of the garage or on the street, garage winds up being filled with storage junk.
If you are a US citizen, they are not entitled to your unlocked phone. They need a judicial warrant if they want you to unlock your phone with a PIN/password. It is settled case law that that falls under your protections under the 14th Amendment.
They can take it for a "reasonable amount of time" (inconvenience you for a few hours and make you miss your connecting flight) while they copy an encrypted image. They then must return it to you.
I'm not sure this is 100% true. Courts have found that in order for the exception to the 4th amendment at borders to apply the search has to bear some relationship to the purpose of securing borders. For example
"to conduct such an intrusive and nonroutine search under the border search exception (that is, without a
warrant), the Government must have individualized suspicion of an offense that bears some nexus to the border search exception’s purposes of protecting national security, collecting duties, blocking the entry of unwanted persons, or disrupting efforts to export or import contraband. See also United States v. Ramsey, 431 U.S. 606, 620 (1977) (“The border-search exception is grounded in the recognized right of the sovereign to control, subject to substantive limitations imposed by the Constitution, who and what may enter the country.”). If a nonroutine search becomes too “attenuated” from these historic rationales, it “no longer [will] fall under” the exception"
Of course whether border agents know or care about this is a different story and by the time you are quoting precedent, you're probably beyond any of this being helpful.
Whatever they claimed they needed access for his phone to. Probably nothing serious that would be worth more than a fine, if anything. But now they've got him for deleting evidence, which is pretty bad.
There is no "evidence"; by any reasonable interpretation of that word there would have to be an actual accusation of crime for there to be evidence of one. This was a search predicated on literally no actual basis apart from "we have the right to search your device because we have ultimate power at border passings", essentially just a fishing expedition.
This also doesn't even get to the more important point: If you don't have the contents of the phone you have literally no evidence of a crime being committed, other than the one they invented post-facto: "Deleting data that could hypothetically be incriminating, not in any specific way but just generally, maybe".
Intentional destruction of evidence is also a crime. Now, whether this applies to this scenario I suppose will have to be determined by the courts.
Destroying potential evidence before suspicion is not a crime. Destroying it once under suspicion is a crime. So anyone can destroy their data at their hotel room even just before entry even if the data contains evidence of crimes. Of course the courts could take that into evidence to support the argument that there were crimes but it would not be a crime in and of itself.
Destroying potential evidence before suspicion is a crime if done with intent to impede a future investigation, even if the investigation hasn't yet started. Your example would be a crime if it could be proven that there would likely have been evidence in what you deleted.
Deleting your data is absolutely a crime when you know the authorities could've wanted whatever it was you deleted -- even if they haven't told you yet. It stands to reason that providing a duress PIN that deletes your data when entered would be a crime as well, if said data is of interest.
Not to say that I personally agree with either of those cases. But what is considered crime can get pretty unfair when it comes to the authorities thinking you did something wrong.
Here "wrong" includes phony bullshit like going after political activists. Even if you did nothing actually wrong, and you know it, and you can prove it, successfully messing with the authorities tends to be pretty difficult.
There is a federal criminal provision, 18 U.S.C. § 1519 (destruction, alteration, or falsification of records in federal investigations)
> Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry in any record, document, or tangible object with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States or any case filed under title 11, or in relation to or contemplation of any such matter or case, shall be fined under this title, imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.
That covers the first part of my comment. As for the second part, there is 18 U.S.C. § 2232(a) (destruction or removal of property to prevent seizure)
> Whoever, before, during, or after any search for or seizure of property by any person authorized to make such search or seizure, knowingly destroys, damages, wastes, disposes of, transfers, or otherwise takes any action, or knowingly attempts to destroy, damage, waste, dispose of, transfer, or otherwise take any action, for the purpose of preventing or impairing the Government's lawful authority to take such property into its custody or control or to continue holding such property under its lawful custody and control, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.
IANAL, but the encrypted data on the device could be considered property, and the act of providing the duress PIN in place of the real one could be considered a knowing action for the purpose of preventing the government either from continuing to hold that data under its control, or from seizing the data into its control in the first place (since the data was never decrypted).
I think the issue will fall on whether the encrypted data on the device (or its decrypted counterpart) counts as property. The rest looks pretty clear-cut to me.
Evidence of anything. You're tampering with evidence if you act to prevent them from seeing something, even if they had no reason for suspicion. Like how you get arrested for fleeing even if you didn't do anything wrong.
Let's say I want to retire my laptop to my kid, so I reformat it. Are you saying in the eventuality that federal police then wants my laptop that I have committed a crime?
If so, on that assumption, should no one ever be able to erase data on their hardware? Is it schrodingers guilt, that you're simply not guilty until someone looks, and then you are?
Legal cases are adjudicated by human judges who have been dealing with scenarios like this for thousands of years, since long before the invention of software and laptops, and who are not the least bit challenged when presented with strawman scenarios like the one you called out.
>> Deleting your data is absolutely a crime when you know the authorities could've wanted whatever it was you deleted -- even if they haven't told you yet.
> Can you provide a statute number for this crime please? Any federal or even state statute will do
with this:
> The google search required to find the answer ("federal statute for destruction of evidence") is shorter than your question here.
> "Whoever knowingly alters, destroys, mutilates, conceals, covers up, falsifies, or makes a false entry..."[0]
The person you were replying to was asking for the basis of the crime where you haven't been informed police wanted your data.
I pointed that out with a scenario. It's not a strawman.
If you want to retire you laptop to your kid, and so you reformat at the moment a federal officer is looking over your shoulder asking to look at it, then yes, you have.
It's more about knowing the PIN would wipe the device, and providing it with that intent.
Edit: 18 U.S.C. § 1519 doesn't seem to cover this (unless it covers the act of setting up the duress PIN in the first place as "altering"). § 2232(a) covers actually knowingly providing the duress PIN.
Mines (in wars, as implied by "solider") aren't illegal. Also even for the first example there are certainly improvised explosives you can set up that isn't criminal to create or set off, fireworks for instance. Same with a barrel of gasoline. It's certainly a crime to use it to kill someone, but that's my point. By OP's logic it's not the person who set it up's fault, it's the person who triggered it.
If you set up a device to explode once someone enters a room, it doesn't matter who set it off by entering the room if they had no idea the room would blow up.
I don't think it'll be very easy to get out of liability in this case. The duress PIN is a feature explicitly designed to delete all data when it is entered, especially in cases of coercion like this. There would be more plausible deniability if officers had simply discovered it somewhere and tried it on their own, but in this case it was knowingly provided directly in place of the real PIN.
