In brief
- Samuel Tunick told the New York Times he hopes his defense establishes that the government has no claim on people's data.
- He said he learned during proceedings that federal authorities had quietly flagged him as a suspected terrorist.
- Tunick faces up to five years over a GrapheneOS duress passcode that wiped his Google Pixel during a January 2025 border search.
A GrapheneOS user who has been charged with obstruction over his use of the smartphone operating system’s duress password feature has said he hopes his defense draws a line in the sand.
“I just hope to send the message that the government doesn’t own our data,” Samuel Tunick told the New York Times in an interview published Friday. “The government doesn’t own our communications, our relationships, as hard as they might try to,” he said, adding that in a democracy, “we have to defend our fundamental right to privacy.”
Tunick, 30, is a musician and geography graduate student at Georgia State University. He was returning from the Dominican Republic in January 2025 when Customs and Border Protection officers pulled him aside at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and asked for his phone. He handed it over with a passcode that wiped the device, a duress feature of GrapheneOS, the privacy-focused Android build he runs on his Pixel handset. Prosecutors charged him with obstruction.
Court proceedings later revealed that authorities had placed him on a watch list. He told the NYT he was “surprised and upset,” though he read it against the roughly 40 Stop Cop City protesters and dozens of music festival attendees already charged with domestic terrorism in Georgia.
He linked the case to NSPM-7, a presidential memorandum issued last September that widened the definition of domestic terrorism, calling it "a direct attack on our First Amendment rights to free speech and free assembly."
“Creepy” surveillance
Tunick said he installed GrapheneOS knowing how heavily activists are surveilled, "just out of the principle of privacy." The notion that the government is “trying to dig up dirt on you,” in the wake of his prosecution, he said, is "creepy."
The charge carries up to five years, and he has surrendered his passport. Touring, or visiting family on the West Coast, now requires a judge's sign-off to leave the Northern District of Georgia.
US Attorney Theodore Hertzberg said in a statement that anyone destroying data to prevent a lawful search should expect prosecution. CBP said it may search the devices of anyone crossing the border regardless of citizenship, and that it examined fewer than 0.01% of arriving travelers' devices last fiscal year.
Tunick has pleaded not guilty. GrapheneOS has called its software "completely legal" and constitutionally protected, and a ruling on his motion to suppress is expected no earlier than the end of October.