"Prosecutors later charged Tunick under a federal statute that makes it unlawful to knowingly destroy or damage property to prevent authorities from seizing it."

Except that the agents literally HAD the phone. They didn't require a pass code to seize the phone. Any action they took AFTER taking physical possession of the phone is on them, not the defendant.

The story about the guy detained at an airport with a GrapheneOS phone that boarder patrol entered a wiping code to and has been charged with deleting data gets better:

"Tunick’s attorneys filed a motion to suppress the evidence, claiming that the detention and the seizure were unlawful."

What seizure? They told him they would seize the phone if he didn't provide the code. If it hasn't been seized how can it be that he doesn't have the freedom to wipe it??? That make zero sense. If it was seized then it was boarder patrol who did the wiping and boarder patrol should be charged with the destruction. The guy LITERALLY DID NOT ENTER THE CODE and he didn't have any obligation to provide a code to unlock it in the first place. This isn't the UK.

The US has charged a guy for providing a pass-code that appears to have been entered not by the defendant, but boarder patrol agents, and interestingly prior to any attempt to seize the phone. That is to say it appears the guy was threatened with boarder patrol seizing the phone if he didn't provide a pass code. That is he did, but the pass code provided in GrapheneOS wipes the phone rather than unlocks it, or at least not until it's wiped does it unlock it.

"The government’s indictment, which contains a typo ('Untied States Code'), accuses Tunick of allegedly providing a passcode to border agents that caused the phone to 'delete the digital contents,' prior to the device being seized.'"

It seems crazy that someone can be accused of deleting something when they apparently neither entered the code to wipe the phone nor had they seized the device.

The government would argue with a straight face that if I walk through with a non-activated phone (and they actually do argue something of this nature, as they seize non-activated phones) that I 'wiped' it, but of course that is assuming they had enough of a motive to want to intimidate. While that exact thing doesn't happen non-activated phones are regularly seized at the boarder. That means you have to open the phone and turn it on and activate it to avoid it being seized or something of that nature. I believe their logic is something about stopping stolen phone trafficking or something of that nature. Frankly I get the reason for it whether or not I agree with it. Technical solutions to the problem are far better than banning or restricting the export of phones en mass particularly when your talking about a *SINGLE* phone.

The Copyright Cartel Just Dismissed It's Absurd Lawsuit Against X Over Copyright Claims Of "not doing enough" With Prejudice Meaning It Can't Ever Be Refiled!!!

This happened after wins in the court with Judge Trauger concluding that X can’t be held liable for making it ‘very easy’ to upload infringing material or for monetizing pirated content.

The problem here is these characteristics are not exclusive to infringing material and apply to legitimate content too. This all according to the judge!

Torrent also points out:

"After the Supreme Court’s ruling in Cox v. Sony this Spring, the landscape changed again. X argued that the music publishers’ surviving contributory infringement claim now failed as a matter of law. "

https://torrentfreak.com/x-and-music-publishers-settle-three-year-copyright-clash-after-spacex-ipo/

Wow- austraila's cops are literally calling people who distribute phones focused on privacy criminals and even threatening their users via spamming them saying "NSW Police Force have linked this Signal or Threema account with the VIP Phones encrypted phone supplier. Detectives from State Crime Command will continue to identify, investigate and prosecute all persons connected with the VIP Phone Criminal Network."

"We want these people to know that we now know they have a device and its highly likely that if they're using that device there highly likely to be carrying out serious crime."

I want the Australian police to know that I own a "secure phone" that is more secure than the ones they're freaking out about and am pretty sure I've installed "Threema" in the past on a "secure" LineageOS phone equivalent to these so-called "criminals".

When you make privacy a crime everyone is a criminal particularly law enforcement officers because they always close the door when they take a shit.

Thought this was hilarious. A news report about how criminals are using secure phones and then linking to ordinary faraday bags as if it's some sort of criminal device. umm hello, no, it's just an ordinary faraday bag. My company likely sells this exact product.

Apparently if your run GrapheneOS your a pedophile cop hater.

US government agents (border patrol at an airport) were targeting this guy over "Cop City protests" and during the interrogation they threatened to seize the phone. He went to open it as though he was going to enter a pass code to let them in and the phone instead restarted. This is apparently a feature of GrapheneOS.

The pedophilia? It's part of standard procedure (or a tactic to pressure people into confessing stuff even if unrelated to the questioning) according to boarder patrol agents in find evidence of prohibited items. Keep in mind this was all they questioned him about besides copy city protest related questions and identifying other people.

This isn't the first time board patrol agents have done this sort of thing with activists. In ~ 2017 the FB

Just added the Trezor Safe 5 to our catalog and updated and added new documentation for how to utilize it with free software. The one negative about the Trezor devices is that they direct users to install the Tezsor Suite which is propritary software and undermines ones security. Entertainingly the firmware is released under free software licenses and you can (if you know how) get the Trezors (or some models) to work without the proprietary components utilizing software that ships with at least some distributions. For instance on Debian it'll work with Feather Wallet (Monero) which is really awesomely now in the backports repository (and free software to boot) and the Electrum Bitcoin Wallet. These are the two that tend to be better supported on GNU/Linux and included in distributions to one degree or another and in some instances have some amount of "out of the box" support (thanks to the free software aspects).

https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/trezor-safe-5-cryptocurrency-hardware-wallet-gnulinux-edition-tpe-trzsafe5

Companies are cashing in on age verification:

"At a liquor store, bar, or casino, getting carded is part of the cost of entry. Now the internet is carding people, too—and the companies doing the carding are cashing in."

I warned people before I was born about the dangers of identification. Social security numbers, drivers licenses, other forms of identification including birth certificates, and license plates are not a good or necessary thing.

These are instruments of oppression even if not fully realized or implemented, but every year the politicians steal a little bit more of everyone's freedom and these are the tools they utilize to do so.

They justify these restrictions on your freedom in the name of "safety" and similar causes, but often it's more about their major financiers making a buck. Whether it's licensing used to restrict competition, the copyright carts looking to justify a censorship regime, or profits to be had off verification in the name of safety. Or even simply a company like Facebook not wanting to have to implement a barrier that is not equally applied across sites and apps for competing eyeballs.

These tools need to be done away with- not furthered.

"France's parliament has approved a bill banning social media access for children under 15, making it the first European country to bar children from apps such as TikTok."

Can we just send the kidos down into the mines again to work and be done with it???

Seriously. Half the problem is your not letting kids grow up and adults are getting dumber and dumber. Your babying the kids to death and then they're not learning from their mistakes and making even dumber choices as adults.

"'For four months, all of us in France will have to prove our age,' she told journalists. 'If someone is under 15, the account will be closed.' The minister also gave assurances that users' personal data would be protected."

That's mental. This is the exact sort of reason why I NEVER got on Facebook or Twitter or even used gMail.

I don't need your "protection", didn't ask for it, and shouldn't be burdened by you psychos.

Don't think for a moment that just because your not in France this won't impact you or that it's not something these same nutters aren't trying to or going to implement wherever you are. Left, right, 'libertarian', it's all the same. Power hungry a-holes who want to control you are the ones in power and they run under different names.

New Hampshire is better than everywhere else, with more libertarian freedom leaning folks in politics and moving to the state every day, but it's far from a libertarian utopia [yet]. Though things are getting a little bit better every day. The trick now will be to hinder the fake-ass 'libertarians' who push violent shit and claim it's "freedom". No, violence can't be justified (laws) by things like 'bad words', nudity, 'trans' people. I like privacy too, but the solution is end gov, not bans on trans, nudity, etc.

"France Becomes First European Country To Ban Social Media Access For Under-15s"

Can we just ban Facebook, WhatsApp, X / Twitter, Signal, Telegram, Instagram, TikTok, WeChat, Snapchat and call it a day?

I'd be tempted to add a few more to the list like Reddit and YouTube, but I'll refrain in taking it to such an extreme. Though certainly we can come up with some better solutions than these that aren't so malicious.