A CBP phone search felony case in Georgia is turning a border-device search into a fight over passwords, protest investigations, and the government’s authority to inspect travelers’ phones without a warrant. The Verge reported that Samuel Tunick has been charged with a felony after prosecutors alleged he wiped his phone while Customs and Border Protection officers questioned him.
Tunick, a Georgia man, was an activist, according to The Verge. His lawyers say that matters because they argue the phone search was not really about the reason CBP gave him. According to court filings described by The Verge, officers told Tunick they needed to examine his device to determine whether it contained child sexual abuse material.
Tunick’s attorneys argue in court papers that the stated basis was a pretext for looking into his links to the Stop Cop City protests in Atlanta. Dozens of people connected to those protests were charged under Georgia’s state RICO law, charges that were later dismissed, according to The Verge. Some protesters still face domestic terrorism and arson cases, the report said.
Can CBP search your phone without a warrant?
In Tunick’s case, his lawyers say CBP officers told him they did not need a warrant to search the phone, according to a March motion to suppress evidence. The broader legal question remains unsettled: The Verge reported that courts have not reached one uniform answer on warrantless device searches at the border.
The March motion says Tunick did not agree to the search and repeatedly asked to speak with his attorney. He eventually gave officers a password, according to court records cited by The Verge. When officers entered it, the phone’s display went dark, flashed several times, and appeared to reboot, the court records say.
Prosecutors allege that was not a glitch. They say Tunick used GrapheneOS’s “duress password” feature to erase the device, deleting evidence in the process, according to The Verge.
What is a duress password?
A duress password is a secondary credential designed for coercive situations. In the version at issue here, prosecutors say entering that credential caused the phone to wipe itself rather than unlock normally.
That mechanism is the hinge of the case. If prosecutors are right, Tunick did not merely refuse access, he triggered a destructive function while the government was trying to inspect the device. Tunick’s attorneys, meanwhile, are attacking the search itself, arguing that the government’s stated justification masked a broader probe into political activity.
The case lands in a nastier moment for travelers carrying phones through U.S. ports of entry. The Verge reported that device searches have drawn more scrutiny since Donald Trump returned to office. Phones are no longer just address books with battery anxiety; they hold messages, photos, browsing histories, location traces, and app data, which makes a border search feel less like checking luggage and more like rifling through a life.
The court will have to deal with both layers: whether CBP had lawful authority to search the phone in the first place, and whether allegedly using a wipe credential during that encounter can support a felony charge. The available filings, as reported, do not offer the tidy answer privacy absolutists or border-search maximalists would prefer.
This story draws on original reporting from The Verge.
