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US government targets Cop City protester over phone operating system

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Guardian news report by Timothy Pratt, published 23 July 2026, on the federal prosecution of Sam Tunick, an Atlanta resident associated with the movement against the police training center known as Cop City. The saved copy is a rendered snapshot; the raw server response is preserved alongside it.

What it reports

The US Department of Justice is prosecuting Tunick under 18 U.S.C. § 2232, a little-used federal statute criminalizing destruction of property to prevent its seizure, because his GrapheneOS phone was wiped after he gave agents a passcode during an airport secondary inspection in January 2025. Cybersecurity expert Christophe Boutry and EFF senior staff technologist Bill Budington (spelled “Buddington” in the article) told the paper they had not seen a similar case; Boutry said the prosecution “sends the message that [GrapheneOS] is criminal by default.”

The article draws on testimony from the case’s first hearing, held 20 July 2026 on a defense motion to suppress all evidence from the stop. It reports that federal authorities had placed Tunick on a terrorism watchlist over his alleged Cop City association, that a homeland security agent circulated his name and photo to a CBP tactical terrorism response team and an FBI joint-terrorism taskforce officer three hours before his flight landed, and that agents’ questions centered on child sexual abuse images the defense calls a pretext for a fishing expedition into his protest connections. Tunick asked four times for a lawyer and was rebuffed; agents produced no warrant and did not read him his rights. A ruling on the suppression motion is not expected before the end of October 2026.

The report also situates the case internationally: Boutry describes French and Spanish frustration with GrapheneOS phones, and police in Catalonia profiling Google Pixel owners on the assumption they run GrapheneOS and are drug dealers or gang members.

What it is evidence for

Limitations

The article is a single news report resting largely on the defense motion and one day of suppression-hearing testimony; the government’s full account has not been tested. It does not state whether Tunick entered a duress credential deliberately or which passcode he provided, and it predates the court’s ruling on both the suppression motion and the charge itself. The Catalonia profiling claim is attributed to an Android Authority opinion piece rather than primary reporting.

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