It would depend on precisely what the ask was. Did the officer ask, "Give me the pin to unlock the phone."? In that case the command was complied with.

▲

gruez 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Even if the prompt was vague like "what's the pin for the phone", you'd be hard pressed to convince a judge that a duress pin (to wipe the phone) is a reasonable person[1] interpretation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_person

▲

GVIrish 2 days ago | parent [-]

The claim was that giving the delete PIN constitutes lying or making a false statement. If someone complied with what was asked, they would not be guilty of lying, even if a reasonable person would judge that the action did not meet the intent of the ask. And it doesn't appear that they are charging him with making a false statement.

The fact that the feds are using an obscure law to argue that he destroyed property to prevent it from being seized shows that they're reaching here.

	▲	gruez 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		> If someone complied with what was asked, they would not be guilty of lying, even if a reasonable person would judge that the action did not meet the intent of the ask. This doesn't pass the sniff test. Consider the following: Cops: "where were you on the night of the murder?" Suspect: "at work" Cops: "You're lying, we found surveillance footage of you near your girlfriend's apartment" Suspect: "ah-ha, what I actually meant by 'at work', was that I was mentally at work!" Of course, there's some grey area where the suspect gives cagey or vague answers, but in this case by giving a duress pin, it's pretty obvious the intention was to deceive the CBP officer.

▲

tsimionescu 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Not really, no. I think it would be extremely hard to convince any jury that you really believed that a PIN that wipes the phone was what the officer was asking for.