Technology

When you seize their phone, tell them your passcode is explicitly not the destruction code, and do not answer any more questions besides insisting this.

I feel like there might be a couple of things you have the the wrong way around in this sentence.

Nah, write the duress password on a piece of paper and keep it in your phone case. Then keep your mouth shut. Let the cops find it and try it themselves.

And what about maybe also adding in a friend or relative that's with you so that you can inform the cop that one of you tells only truths and one of you tells only lies. I think we're onto something here. 'Dispatch, I'm gonna need the Riddlemaster to come down here. We got another one.'

I'm inclined to think he's going to get away with it, but more because of the circumstances under which he provided the password, as in prolonged detention where he was specifically denied access to a lawyer.

Someone has to fall on their sword to get important issues brought before the supreme court but I wouldn't get my hopes up with this court.

Jury nullification is a thing for reason.

This isn't new. Journalists coming into the US in the aughts would be harassed by CBT and DHS, forced to open and unlock their laptops (and then delete whatever the officers found unsavory.

So they'd come in with their computers fully encrypted and wouldn't have the pass key, themselves, so it was impossible to unlock them. If they were detained unreasonably, that became a new story the next morning.

Once through customs, correspondents would call their office and get the key.

But it sucks if you don't have a whole news agency to back your rights.

What if you set a durress password to something simple like 12345, plead the 5th, and the cops try to brute force your device? Would it still be your fault or is it the cops fault since they are the ones who entered the password while trying to bypass your phone's security measures?

Also, what if you explicitly tell them there is a durress password, but refuse to tell them what it is? Surely if they were informed of the risk and proceeded regardless the blame would fall squarely on them for risking a process that might "destroy evidence"

I don't know what the fuck he did to get on the FBI radar

....

Dude is just protesting the construction of a large cop training facility near him.

That is what did it.

Here is my problem with this interpretation...

Is data property? Sure, ideas, concepts, photos, etc can be trademarked/copy-write protected and have some degree of ownership, but I'm talking at a much lower level here... Is the particular configuration of memory on your phone a piece of property? If no, then no property was destroyed by wiping the phone. All of the storage and memory is still intact and functional. If yes, then we must look further...is the position (not the switch itself) of a binary switch (like a light switch) a physical thing that you can own? Would you consider it destroyed if it was switched away from it's original position?

I don't think you could charge him with destroying property... Destruction of evidence maybe, but the property is undamaged and functioning normally.

Other arguments. The cop actually destroyed the data. Or, defendant claims he did not know the cops would use the pin to wipe the phone, and that they just wanted to know what the PIN was.

I wouldn't say there is enough evidence here to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that this guy destroyed any property in response to a search. He didn't destroy anything, what was destroyed is arguably not property, and he may not be aware that his duress pin was going to be used on the device in the first place.