Samuel Tunick, an Atlanta activist, is the first known American to face a federal criminal charge for allegedly using a "duress password" during a warrantless border search at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport in January 2025.

The charge was brought under 18 U.S.C. § 2232, a rarely invoked federal statute that makes it illegal to knowingly destroy property to prevent authorities from seizing it. Prosecutors allege Tunick triggered a duress passcode on his phone during a Customs and Border Protection search on January 24, 2025, before agents seized the device.

According to The Guardian, the case is the first known criminal prosecution in the United States involving the feature because of the use of a password. Tunick has pleaded not guilty. A federal judge is expected to rule on his motion to suppress no earlier than the end of October.

A duress password is a secondary unlock code configured alongside a user's regular passcode. Entering the normal PIN opens the phone as usual. Entering the duress code causes the device to perform an immediate and irreversible wipe by deleting the encryption keys that make stored data readable only with the correct code, effectively returning the phone to a blank state.

The feature is built into GrapheneOS, a privacy-hardened version of Android made exclusively for Google Pixel phones and used by journalists, activists, and security researchers. The operating system added the duress PIN feature in June 2024 for situations in which someone is physically compelled to hand over a device.

Edward Snowden previously drew attention to GrapheneOS when he said he used it daily.

I use GrapheneOS every day. — Edward Snowden (@Snowden) November 4, 2022

I use GrapheneOS every day.

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) November 4, 2022

GrapheneOS and other privacy-focused mobile systems have appeared in legal disputes before. In 2023, as Decrypt reported, courts encountered limits in smartphone monitoring when devices running privacy-focused operating systems, including GrapheneOS, resisted surveillance software installed under a judge's order.

Tunick's lawyers say the January 2025 airport incident fits the type of coercive scenario the duress feature was designed to address. According to his attorneys, Customs and Border Protection agents moved Tunick into a secondary inspection room when he returned from the Dominican Republic and demanded access to his phone without a warrant. Under the so-called border search exception to the Fourth Amendment, CBP asserts authority to inspect devices before a traveler formally enters the United States.

Border device searches have become a recurring civil-liberties flashpoint because phones can contain years of messages, photos, browsing data, location history, and work records. Rights groups have argued that the volume and sensitivity of modern phone data make device searches meaningfully different from luggage inspections, while border agencies continue to rely on special search powers at ports of entry.

His attorneys also say Tunick was denied a lawyer and was not read his Miranda rights. Court filings state that after Tunick provided a code, "the screen went blank, flashed several times, and the phone appeared to restart." Agents seized the phone regardless and released him into the country shortly afterward.

The government's indictment accuses Tunick of providing "a passcode to border agents that caused the phone to delete the digital contents" before the device was seized.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation maintains a public guide on device rights at the U.S. border, part of a broader movement toward privacy-first tools. Tunick's motion to suppress remains pending, with a ruling expected no earlier than the end of October.