When a Phone Search Can Map Political Associations

Federal prosecutors have charged an Atlanta man with a felony after his privacy-protected cellphone erased its contents while Customs and Border Protection agents were attempting to search it.

This case raises an alarming question: Can the border-search exception become a gateway for examining an American citizen’s political associations?

According to The Independent, Samuel Tunick was returning from the Dominican Republic in January 2025 when federal agents detained him at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and seized his phone.

Tunick had been associated with Defend the Atlanta Forest, an environmental movement that opposed construction of Atlanta’s police and fire training facility, commonly called “Cop City.” His attorney alleges that the government’s real purpose was to investigate Tunick’s connections to that movement.

Agents reportedly told Tunick that they wanted to inspect his phone for child sexual-abuse material. His attorney calls that explanation a pretext for a “fishing expedition” into his client’s political associations.

Tunick repeatedly requested a lawyer, according to his defense, but agents refused. He eventually supplied a passcode. When an agent entered it, the phone’s screen went blank and the device apparently restarted.

Tunick used GrapheneOS, a privacy-oriented operating system that allows a user to create a “duress” passcode capable of wiping all data from a phone. Prosecutors allege that Tunick deliberately supplied such a code to prevent the government from seizing information. He has been charged under a federal law that prohibits destroying property to prevent its lawful seizure.

To be sure, the government has a legitimate interest in preventing the destruction of evidence. Privacy software does not grant anyone a license to obstruct a lawful investigation. But that principle rests on the central question in this case: Was the government’s proposed search lawful in the first place?

Or was this case more like someone pouring the water out of a water bottle before going through the TSA inspection line?

Remember, the justification for warrantless border searches is to prevent contraband – such as illicit drugs, weapons, invasive pests, or diseased biological agents – from coming into the country. Any other purpose should require a warrant. But Tunick had not wiped the data from his phone to prevent the execution of a warrant for law-enforcement purposes.

The government enjoys broad search authority at international borders and their functional equivalents, including airports. But a modern smartphone is not a suitcase. It can reveal years of communications, photographs, location histories, reading habits, religious interests, and political relationships.

As the Project for Privacy and Surveillance Accountability warned, Americans returning home are often pressured to unlock their devices without a warrant. Courts remain divided over what level of suspicion, if any, the government needs to conduct a forensic examination of a traveler’s digital life.

Tunick’s case adds a serious First Amendment dimension. If agents used allegations of contraband as a pretext to map his connections to a protest movement, the search threatened not just his privacy but also his freedoms of speech and association. The government must not be allowed to use the border as a constitutional dead zone where political networks can be examined at will.
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Tunick has asked a federal court in Atlanta to suppress the statements and evidence obtained during his detention. The judge is not expected to rule before late October. Many groups will focus on the obvious – and necessary – implications of this case for the Fourth Amendment.

​We’ll keep an eye on this case for another reason – it has the potential to be a landmark win for the First Amendment as well as for personal privacy.

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