Post by @evacide@hachyderm.io

This matters a lot because people are constantly asking me if they should set up a duress passcode in order to fool law enforcement.

https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/24/us-accuses-american-of-allegedly-wiping-his-phone-using-a-duress-password-during-border-search/

TechCrunch

US accuses American of allegedly wiping his phone using a 'duress' password during border search | TechCrunch

A U.S. citizen has asked a court to throw out the government's claim that he gave over a passcode to border authorities that wiped his phone's data, opening up fresh questions about a person's constitutional rights at the U.S. border.

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tehfishman

@tehfishman@ioc.exchange 6 hours ago

@evacide Also rephrased as "Should I engage in an action that could easily be perceived as destruction of evidence?" to the shrieks of lawyers everywhere

evacide

@evacide@hachyderm.io 6 hours ago

@tehfishman As I have said elsewhere, our lawyers have been cautioning us about spoliation of evidence for as long as we have been writing guides. This is absolutely one of those things that seems clever to engineers and horrifying to US lawyers.

RRB

@rrb@infosec.exchange 6 hours ago

@evacide Don't most of these devices have wear leveling, which makes erase programs ineffective?

https://ssd.eff.org/glossary/wear-leveling

Or am I misinformed? Or do they just nuke the key?

Wear leveling

Some forms of digital storage, like the flash memory used in solid-state drives (SSD) and USB sticks, can wear out if overwritten many times. Wear leveling is a method that spreads the writing of data evenly across all of the media to prevent one part of it being overwritten too...

Millie

@millie@infosec.exchange 6 hours ago

@evacide honestly skill issue on part of law enforcement for not

1. copying the encrypted content before attempting decrypt
2. using the built-in software for decryption

this is like digital forensics 101