Last month, a man in Michigan got charged under Michigan’s felony destruction-of-evidence statute because he wiped his phone at a U.S. border crossing—and he wasn’t the first. What makes this case different is how it played out. He wasn’t hiding something obvious; he was running GrapheneOS, a hardened Android fork built for privacy, and when customs asked for the PIN, he gave them the duress code. The system responded exactly as designed: the data vanished. Now the government is treating that designed behavior as destruction. That’s not how most of us think about a phone that follows its owner’s instructions—especially when the owner wasn’t trying to hide anything criminal. The charge isn’t even a terrorism statute; it’s a generic obstruction charge filed in state court. That mismatch tells you everything about where this is heading. Technical Overview The technical setup for this kind of operation isn't complicated, but it’s not trivial either. You're essentially de...