Prosecution of Cop City protester tests federal anti-destruction statute

Airport interrogation details raise constitutional rights questions

The U.S. Department of Justice is attempting to prosecute an Atlanta resident in connection with the movement against the police training center known as Cop City because he had GrapheneOS on his phone, an open-source operating system that enables users to enter a passcode and wipe a phone clean, according to court documents and testimony from a hearing held Monday.

The case centers on a federal statute that makes it a crime to destroy property in an effort to prevent it from being seized. Cybersecurity experts said it may be the first time the law has been aimed at the operating system, which works on Google Pixel phones, and raised concerns about a technology created for privacy and security being used to criminalize protesters.

The defendant, Sam Tunick, was stopped for interrogation at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on January 24, 2025, after vacationing in the Dominican Republic. Federal authorities had placed him on a terrorism watchlist because of his alleged association with the movement against Cop City, a fact he did not know at the time.

A Homeland Security agent circulated an email containing Tunick’s name and photo three hours before his arrival, indicating he was being investigated for “suspected terrorism activities,” according to court testimony. The email was sent to agents on the Customs and Border Patrol tactical terrorism response team and an FBI Atlanta joint-terrorism task force officer.

When Tunick arrived, an agent took him to a room with a table, several chairs, a camera and a microphone, where several agents began a “secondary inspection.” The interrogation questions centered on child sexual abuse images, which the defense motion described as “a pretext for a fishing expedition into Mr Tunick’s connections” to the movement against Cop City.

Tunick asked four times during the interrogation to speak with a lawyer but was rebuffed each time, according to courtroom testimony. The agents produced no warrant and did not read him his rights.

A Justice Department attorney and the airport agents testifying Monday asserted Tunick was subjected to a routine interrogation at an international airport, “looking for anything that’s prohibited,” as Larry Findley, a Customs and Border Patrol officer, testified.

Agent Findley and several others repeatedly asked Tunick to open his phone, telling him they would seize it if he did not comply. When he provided a passcode, “the screen went blank, flashed several times and the phone appeared to restart,” according to the defense motion.

The defense filed a motion asking the court to suppress all evidence the agents obtained, including the erasure of the phone’s contents, citing violations of Tunick’s constitutional rights. The motion raises the question of which constitutional protections apply at national borders, including international airports.

Opposition to the $109 million police training center, which opened last spring, came from a wide range of local and national organizations and protesters, centered on concerns around police militarization and clearing forests. Atlanta police said the center was needed for “world-class” training. Several state attempts to prosecute Cop City protesters have foundered in recent years, while this is the second recent federal effort after the Justice Department announced another indictment last month.

Christophe Boutry, a cybersecurity and surveillance expert, said the case “sends the message that [GrapheneOS] is criminal by default.” Boutry and Bill Buddington, senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, both said they had not seen a similar case. Marlon Kautz, a member of the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, said: “We all have a right to secure our private data against unconstitutional searches. And we should — especially in a time of rising authoritarianism.”

Boutry said Tunick’s case was of a piece with tendencies in France and Spain, where authorities have been frustrated in attempts to gain access to phones of journalists, lawyers and political opponents due to GrapheneOS. In Catalonia, police have been profiling people with Google Pixel phones, assuming they have GrapheneOS installed and are drug dealers or gang members, he said. At the same time, Boutry said, the “main goal [of the operating system] is protection of privacy.”

A judge’s ruling on the defense motion will take at least until the end of October.