The phone owner is either outside of the US, where they don’t have jurisdiction, or inside the US where should be protected from this level of invasion of privacy

In this particular case, there are also 5th amendment issues with the Miranda warnings.

The CBP officers repeatedly ignored the defendant's requests for a lawyer, and they continued to question him anyway. Then, the defendant allegedly told them the "unlock" / duress code.

There's existing case law in the US that phone unlock codes are "testimony" within the 5th amendment's right to remain silent, so a search warrant cannot compel someone to divulge them. (This is different from a phone unlock fingerprint, which can be compelled with a warrant).

I halfway expect the government to argue somewhat against this case law, but who knows? DOJ is now scraping the very bottom of the barrel to find lawyers, so sometimes it's hard to tell if they have any kind of coherent plan at all.

In the US, you don't have to specify what evidence was destroyed, but you DO have to offer a reasonable, articulated suspicion that a crime has occurred, you have to specify what crime has occurred, AND you have to specify the type of evidence you're looking for.

To use your burning down the house analogy, the police would have to say, "I think you're selling cocaine, based on the fact that I arrested someone leaving your house with cocaine and they said you sold it to them, and I want to search your house for cocaine," before they file destruction of evidence charges because you burned down your house.

They can't say, "I think you're selling drugs because I think you look like someone who sells drugs, and I want to search your house for anything that might be drug-related," and that's basically what happened here.

For the destruction of evidence charges to stick, they first need to present evidence that a specific crime might have occurred, and present evidence suggesting that evidence of that crime exists on the phone, AND specify what kind of evidence might exist. So, if they have text messages from another person, that could be used to prove another half of the conversation is on the phone. If someone testifies to pictures or videos existing on the phone, they can use that. But they can't just say, "SOME evidence of SOMETHING must have been on there."

Wow! You may be right here, not a SovCit, just European and not used to how the US criminalises their citizens in every way possible. For a country of “free speech” and “freedom” there sure are a number of ways you let the government walk all over you.

I wonder when they draw the line, could you be persecuted for deleting an email while at home before you travel? on the plane? What about in the security line?

In this case it’s just as likely that he accidentally gave the duress code instead of his actual pin, given zero crime this should be a valid and successful defense, although murca gonna murca.

It most likely is going to get tossed just on procedural constitutional violations- they didn't read him rights, didn't provide him a lawyer, and actively lied about what they were supposedly searching for.

I saw this same comment in the comments on the article and it just doesn’t make any sense. The owner of the phone didn’t burn anything down, the feds did. They were the ones with the device, they were the ones that typed in the code.

This would be like the federal government showing up to search your house, you saying “no”, they say “give us a key” (not the key to unlock, but a key) and you give them one set on fire and they light the house on fire themselves. You didn’t do anything except give them what they asked for, it’s their fault they didn’t realize what it would do. I believe if the defendant argues it properly in court there’s gonna be nothing the Feds can do, because he didn’t interfere with anything.

Maybe if the feds had asked for the passcode that let them into the phone so they could search it then that’s one thing. But I seriously doubt they did.

edit: in addition what he's being charged of is destruction of property to prevent seizure. The government still has the phone, they were not prevented from taking property under their control. This statute doesn't match in any sense of the word.

for the purpose of preventing or impairing the Government’s lawful authority to take such property into its custody or control or to continue holding such property under its lawful custody and control