When you seize their phone, tell them your passcode is explicitly not the destruction code, and do not answer any more questions besides insisting this.

I feel like there might be a couple of things you have the the wrong way around in this sentence.

Nah, write the duress password on a piece of paper and keep it in your phone case. Then keep your mouth shut. Let the cops find it and try it themselves.

And what about maybe also adding in a friend or relative that's with you so that you can inform the cop that one of you tells only truths and one of you tells only lies. I think we're onto something here. 'Dispatch, I'm gonna need the Riddlemaster to come down here. We got another one.'

This isn't new. Journalists coming into the US in the aughts would be harassed by CBT and DHS, forced to open and unlock their laptops (and then delete whatever the officers found unsavory.

So they'd come in with their computers fully encrypted and wouldn't have the pass key, themselves, so it was impossible to unlock them. If they were detained unreasonably, that became a new story the next morning.

Once through customs, correspondents would call their office and get the key.

But it sucks if you don't have a whole news agency to back your rights.

Seriously. Wipe it, claim it's new to you or whatever, put your stuff back on later if you need to. I'm sure you can find somewhere or someone you trust to get you that data back whenever you actually need it.

I don't know what the fuck he did to get on the FBI radar

....

Dude is just protesting the construction of a large cop training facility near him.

That is what did it.

I don't think ordinary citizens should be required to know the law in lawyer-like detail when they travel.

I think in the broad strokes, you're probably right about his legal situation, but it suuuuuucks and it's not what I think of when I hear the word "freedom," for sure.

The issue I'm seeing with the whole case is they siezed his phone, they kept his phone, the seizure of his property happened successfully. A person later entered something they believed would open it but instead it wiped it. The end user didn't wipe it, and didn't lie to the agents of the state because a duress PIN is still a PIN, I'm willing to wager they didn't specify that they wanted his 'unlock PIN' and instead just asked him for a PIN (personal identification number), which he gave.

What if you set a durress password to something simple like 12345, plead the 5th, and the cops try to brute force your device? Would it still be your fault or is it the cops fault since they are the ones who entered the password while trying to bypass your phone's security measures?

Also, what if you explicitly tell them there is a durress password, but refuse to tell them what it is? Surely if they were informed of the risk and proceeded regardless the blame would fall squarely on them for risking a process that might "destroy evidence"

I'm inclined to think he's going to get away with it, but more because of the circumstances under which he provided the password, as in prolonged detention where he was specifically denied access to a lawyer.

Someone has to fall on their sword to get important issues brought before the supreme court but I wouldn't get my hopes up with this court.

Jury nullification is a thing for reason.