When a Department of Homeland Security official sent out an alert to stop Samuel Tunick, a Stop Cop City activist, at an airport in January 2025, they said the reason was because he was suspected of “terrorist activities,” according to new filed court records which include a screenshot of the alert and photos of Tunick’s interrogation.
Tunick ultimately provided Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials with a code that, when entered, wiped his security- and privacy-focused GrapheneOS phone. Tunick is now being criminally charged for that alleged act, in one of the most high profile technology civil rights cases in recent memory.
The court records also showed that CBP officials lied to Tunick during his interrogation. Instead of saying he was being targeted for suspected terrorism — although this search happened just at the start of the second Trump administration, it has dramatically broadened what organizations or people may be considered such — they said they needed his phone to look for “kiddie porn.”
“Good afternoon,” an email sent from a Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) official, part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to CBP and other officials reads. “The following subject is scheduled to arrive in ATL [Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport] today via DL 1778 @ 1930 Hours. TUNICK is under investigation by HSI/JTTF for suspected terrorist activities.” The email includes a photo of Tunick, and asks the officials to direct him to secondary inspection, retain all of his electronics, and collect their passcodes.
As 404 Media first revealed in December, Tunick was charged because he allegedly “did knowingly destroy, damage, waste, dispose of, and otherwise take any action to delete the digital contents of a Google Pixel cellular phone, for the purpose of preventing and impairing the Government’s lawful authority to take said property into its custody and control.” Matthew Dodge, one of Tunick’s lawyers, previously told 404 Media he only found one other case using the same obscure law, a drug trafficking case. “This is extraordinarily rare,” Dodge said.
Tunick was part of the Stop Cop City movement in Atlanta, which broadly protested the building of a large police training center, and which authorities investigated for arson, vandalism, and doxing. Tunick is not suspected of any crime beyond the alleged wiping of the phone, and has previously put his current prosecution in the context of the wide spanning cases against other Stop Cop City protesters.
The newly filed court record, in which Tunick’s lawyers argue that evidence should be thrown out, include new photos and descriptions of the airport encounter. The CBP officials asked Tunick if they were going to find “kiddie porn” on his phone, which Tunick immediately denied. “As the evidentiary hearing made clear, these unfounded accusations were nothing more than pretext for a fishing expedition into the depths of Mr. Tunick’s devices,” the lawyers wrote. They added, “Officer Findley acknowledged that officers had no reason whatsoever to believe Mr. Tunick possessed child pornography,” referring to one of the officials.
Tunick faces a maximum of five years in federal prison for allegedly wiping the phone.
“I hope people understand that the charges against me are meant to intimidate people against protecting their data and their privacy, and the government hopes to set a precedent that no one has the right to privacy,” Tunick previously told 404 Media.
If the cops express interest in your data and then you take active steps to conceal or erase said data, they might charge you with Obstruction.
If there is an automated system, the charge is less likely to be brought, and unlikely to stick, because you were not responding to something that just happened.
(And I’m not saying the guy in this situation actually did what they said he did. Cops lie constantly. Video or it didn’t happen.)
I thought about this too, but I think you’d still be charged (IANAL).
If you look at what he was charged with:
So, even if you nuked your phone before going through security or even at home before your flight, I imagine you could still be prosecuted for “knowingly… delete the digital contents… for the purpose of preventing… lawful authorities to take said property into its custody”.
It’s all based on your intent behind the action and this is what the prosecution and defense would argue.
edit: typo
So technically, if I as much as delete cookies because I don’t want anyone, including the government, to track me, I’m breaking the law in the US and could be charged and imprisoned for up to 5 years? Land of the free 🤣
I know you’re being sarcastic, but I think removing cookies and trackers could easily be classified as “self-protection”.
But if you shred your blueprints for building a dirty bomb, or delete your contacts to your local drug dealers with the intention of obstructing justice - then, yeah, you’re gonna have a bad time.
Oh, that would be the common sense, right? My point is exactly the fact that you don’t need to be doing anything illegal in order to be charged. If you’re building a dirty bomb, that’s illegal. Shredding blueprints is obstruction of justice, an additional charge, that’s common sense. But shredding blueprints for a garden shed isn’t illegal, because building a garden shed isn’t illegal. Just the same, deleting cookies - or wiping your phone clean - shouldn’t be illegal, unless it’s concealing a crime. Protesting against police brutality is not a crime, organising is not a crime, there is no evidence he did commit any crimes. He’s being charged because he prevented a baseless, illegal search. And if preventing an illegal search is a crime, then all searches are legal and privacy is dead.
The real test will be how a jury, and subsequent judges, rule on this case. I think that matters a ton for future precedent and there is a chance this case moves waaaaay up the court system before a firm answer gets laid down.