Seriously. Wipe it, claim it’s new to you or whatever, put your stuff back on later if you need to. I’m sure you can find somewhere or someone you trust to get you that data back whenever you actually need it.
It brings up an interesting question: if wiping your phone after being requested access to it is illegal (?), would wiping your phone in anticipation of access being requested also illegal? Are we effectively required to give the federal government access to every private account in order to travel?
As long as you aren’t doing it during an active investigation, no it wouldn’t be illegal. That’s the problem. Guy thought he was sneaky, and got busted. If you come in to investigate and suddenly you are deleting all the records, you are going to have a serious problem.
In the regular world, you can delete something to keep the cops from knowing about it as long as it’s not covering up a crime. You won’t find a charge of “destruction of evidence” without an investigation of an explicit crime with probable cause.
If they had probable cause to search his phone, they would have used it when he was in Georgia, not waited for him at the airport where he had fewer rights.
Seriously. Wipe it, claim it’s new to you or whatever, put your stuff back on later if you need to. I’m sure you can find somewhere or someone you trust to get you that data back whenever you actually need it.
It brings up an interesting question: if wiping your phone after being requested access to it is illegal (?), would wiping your phone in anticipation of access being requested also illegal? Are we effectively required to give the federal government access to every private account in order to travel?
My understanding is that if you knew a search was going to happen, it’s illegal. But good luck proving that you knew it would happen.
I think you might be thinking of spoilation–https://civilprocedure.uslegal.com/discovery/spoliation-of-evidence/ --which is destroying evidence you think might be subpoened. I don’t think it would apply in this scenario.
As long as you aren’t doing it during an active investigation, no it wouldn’t be illegal. That’s the problem. Guy thought he was sneaky, and got busted. If you come in to investigate and suddenly you are deleting all the records, you are going to have a serious problem.
In the regular world, you can delete something to keep the cops from knowing about it as long as it’s not covering up a crime. You won’t find a charge of “destruction of evidence” without an investigation of an explicit crime with probable cause.
If they had probable cause to search his phone, they would have used it when he was in Georgia, not waited for him at the airport where he had fewer rights.