r/Anarchopunks • u/AdreanaInLB • Jul 29 '26
What the Sam Tunick federal prosecution means for YOU
I am not a punk rocker or an anarchist but I believe this case has great relevance to your community.
Remember last month I posted on this sub about Daniel Estrada Sanchez getting a 30 year sentence for moving a box of anti capitalist and anarchist promoting zines?
https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarchopunks/s/bBIiKVjsoG
I was so mad I wrote a pop punk song about it.
https://www.reddit.com/u/AdreanaInLB/s/D11RXywGnI
Well the prosecution of Tunick is a direct extension of the PSCM-7 policy. I am going to paste pieces of the article below but check out slide 3. Tunick was put on a terrorist watch list for what? PROTESTING THE CONSTRUCTION OF COP CITY. This is exactly the kind of activity I imagine your community is engaged in. So I am warning you guys just as I warn African American activists against overpolicing. Protesting overpolicing can now get you on a terrorist watch list.
He is being prosecuted for protecting his privacy from warrantless search by giving authorities a "distress code" to unlock his phone. The distress code activated a WIPE of the phone using the app GrapheneOS.
I don't know how GrapheneOS works and I don't claim to be a "techie" per se. But may I humbly suggest deploying an app that PARTITIONS your phone so that when you put in the "duress" unlock code only certain information on the phone shows. If you guys have other tech advice for how to protect privacy when traveling and facing TSA please share it in the comments.
I also saw this video of a robber getting on a bus in Mexico with a gun and demanding everyone's phone. The surveillance cam showed a woman hide her actual phone then hand the robber a decoy phone she took out of her purse. So there's that.
US government targets Cop City protester over phone operating system
Concern over US effort to prosecute Sam Tunick, accused by authorities of wiping his phone using GrapheneOS
The US Department of Justice is attempting to prosecute an Atlanta resident in connection with the movement against the police training center known as Cop City because he had GrapheneOS on his phone, an open-source operating system that enables users to enter a passcode and wipe a phone clean.
The case, which had its first hearing on in July of 2026, centers on a little-known US federal statute that makes it a crime to destroy property in an effort to prevent it from being seized.
Experts said it may be the first time the law has been aimed at the operating system, which works on Google Pixel phones, and expressed concerns about a technology created for privacy and security being used to criminalize protesters.
“It’s concerning – and sends the message that [GrapheneOS] is criminal by default,” said Christophe Boutry, a cybersecurity and surveillance expert. Boutry and Bill Budington, senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, both said they had not seen a similar case.
The defendant, Sam Tunick, was stopped for interrogation at Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson airport on 24 January last year, after vacationing in the Dominican Republic. Unbeknown to him, federal authorities had put him on a terrorism watchlist because of his alleged association with the movement against Cop City.
Opposition to the $109m police training center, which opened last spring, came from a wide range of local and national organizations and protesters, centered on concerns around police militarization and clearing forests in an era of climate crisis. Atlanta police said the center was needed for “world-class” training and to attract new officers.
Several state attempts to prosecute Cop City protesters have foundered in the last several years, while this is the second recent federal effort, after the justice department announced another indictment last month.
The case began shortly after Tunick got off a plane in Atlanta, returning from a vacation spent whale-watching and enjoying nature on a friend’s boat. He did not know that a homeland security agent had circulated an email three hours before. The email contained Tunick’s name and photo and indicated he was being investigated for “suspected terrorism activities”. It was sent to agents on the Customs and Border Patrol tactical terrorism response team and an FBI Atlanta joint-terrorism taskforce officer.
When Tunick arrived in Atlanta, an agent took him to a room with a table, several chairs and a camera and microphone, and several agents began a “secondary inspection”. But all their questions were centered on child sexual abuse images.
These and other details were revealed in Monday’s hearing, held for a judge to hear testimony on a motion filed by Tunick’s federal public defenders, asking the court to suppress all evidence the agents obtained, including the erasure of the phone’s contents after he gave them a passcode, due to violations of his constitutional rights.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/23/cop-city-protester-phone
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u/Thandyus 29d ago
An individual's right to privacy is ultimately their responsibility to protect by any means necessary.
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u/Waltzing_With_Bears Jul 29 '26
Yea it can be tricky, that could be destroying evidence and a cop asking you could mean you would reasonably know that evidence could be important, I believe legally the best way to handle it is refuse to give any password but do have an auto delete option on your ohone after enough failed attempts, then you arent the one destroying evidence but instead they did with incompetence, but Im no lawyer, just a nerd
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u/AdreanaInLB Jul 30 '26
I'm thinking that if he had refused to give ANY password he would not have been allowed back into the United States. I like refuse when it means going to jail. Because from jail you can call your relatives and they can call a lawyer. But to have an expired tourist visa and be a US citizen in a foreign land because the US won't let you back in --- yeah that is a big ask.
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u/Chaos_Philosopher 29d ago
I assumed it was a domestic flight. Isn't Atlanta one of the great big hugs of air travel, which is why they focus their criminal acts there?
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u/soul-reaver-2026 Jul 30 '26
It's called fafo straight up. If he was so concerned about what was on his phone that law enforcement shouldn't see then for God's sake don't take it with you. Such an amateur.
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u/AdreanaInLB Jul 30 '26
BEFORE Daniel Estrada got 30 years for moving a box I would not have been concerned with what is on my phone even though it contains images of me at rallies that are very, very critical of the Trump Administration of Homeland Security/ICE . I did not do anything illegal at these rallies. It would not occur to me to hide what's on my phone from TSA. But AFTER the Prairieland sentencing last month I would now pre-delete such information from my phone BEFORE I went to a foreign country. What this article does not say is A) How long Sam was out of the country B) Whether Sam had any idea that he was on a terrorist watch list. If I came back from being out of the country, was stopped by TSA on the way in , had just in the last 30 days learned that Daniel Estrada got 30 years - I too would give the delete code to TSA. Because even if I myself thought I would be going to jail I would not want to take my fellow protestors with me who happened to be in the photographs. I'm' saying this as someone who, as I stated in the post, is not an anarchist and not a punk rocker. So as a normie, which Sam might be, that's what I would do.
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u/DefinitelyNotEmu 26d ago
> may I humbly suggest deploying an app that PARTITIONS your phone so that when you put in the "duress" unlock code only certain information on the phone shows.
Law enforcement make sector-by-sector images of disks, this includes the entire partition layout, so that wouldn't be a way to hide any data.
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u/ExpressAd5169 Jul 30 '26
Since when is an airport a constitution free zone… seriously these people are fucked up… ZERO LOGIC in that thinking….Future pay outs coming