It is an unprecedented case. And it risks triggering an unprecedented threat to journalism. The UK police have repeatedly tried to obtain the passwords to the phones of the British independent journalist, Richard Medhurst, the first reporter arrested in London under Section 12: his analyses and comments on Israel’s bloodbath in Gaza – which Amnesty International has characterised as genocide – have been interpreted by the police as support for organisations banned from the UK, such as Hamas and Hezbollah.
The British journalists’ union, the NUJ, and the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) publicly condemned his arrest and the use of anti-terrorism laws against journalists “simply for carrying out their work”.
Wouldn’t they just immediately realize you’ve only given them the duress password?
Also, they will have imaged the phone already before attempting to unlock it, so the “delete all data” feature would be pretty pointless.
Good point. Best to use the duress password when you believe you are in danger.
Regarding imaging, also good point, but Graphene is considered safe BFU and is supposed to disable the USB port while locked.
I would assume state actors have the ability to read out your storage without needing the USB port. Even hardware security chips like secure enclave or TPM I consider to be likely compromised/backdoored by state actors.
This information comes from Celebrite’s claimings. https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/112462756293586146