this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2026
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My hot take: the officer wiped the phone. With their own hands. They're just stupid.
Hotter take: The phone was empty when he handed it over. There was nothing to delete.
It doesn't look like anything to me.
“If you can’t tell, does it matter?”
If they succeed I guess in the future an officer could delete your phone to save face then blame it on you.
Those of us who have asked to avoid the cancer box and been subjected to a subjectively punitive pat-down and fashion show experience are already anticipating just that. Yay!
(And for added fun, call it a cancer box. Wow, when you get that one TSA who only has bad days will you get a great speech as well)
Why do you call it a cancer box? I've been through plenty of them and never seen anything to indicate they're unsafe. Then again, we also used to let people x-ray their feet in shoe stores, soo...
Fun fact: Logan TSA asked the FAA for paperwork showing those things are safe. Anything.
FAA said fuck you.
That's kinda all I need.
I know the anecdotes say it's good. But with anything introduced hurriedly and without clear need - we know the TSA doesn't have good track record anyway - the hype-to-utility ratio is too high.
Yeah, they are masters of parallel construction. ( Aka lying)
Parallel construction is a way to present evidence illegally obtained by coming up with a plausible-seeming other way it was found.
So, rather than saying "we illegally stopped and searched the defendant" they'll get an "informant" (sometimes paid, sometimes coerced) to swear that they tipped them off beforehand.
Yeah... lying
It's a form of lying, but with a specific meaning.
Like how the 9th (or 8th, depending on how you're counting) Commandment says to not bear false witness. That doesn't mean that people following an Abrahamic faith cannot lie... just that they can't lie in that one specific way.
that was the issue I was going to bring up. If the officer wants to try varuous pin numbers how is it the owners responsibility as to what the phone does.
My phone is set to automatically wipe after X number of incorrect pin attempts. If I just kept telling law enforcement the wrong pin number because I cant remember it exactly, what is the difference if the phone wipes. Once the phone is out of my hands how can I be responsible for what the phone does? (Assuming I dont issue a remote wiping command)
The law isn't that stupid.