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 Monday, 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 Buddington, senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, both said they had not seen a similar case.
