Much of the public interest in the case of Samuel Tunick has focused on the charge — carrying up to a five-tear prision sentence — that  Mr. Tunick “destroyed property to prevent its seizure” by the government by giving Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents at the Atlanta airport a “duress password” for a smartphone Mr. Tunich was carrying when he returned from an international trip.

The phone seized from Mr. Tunick at the airport was running Graphene OS, an open-source variant of the Android operating system. When one of the CBP agents entered the password Mr. Tunick (under duress) provided, it wiped the phone’s user memory and reset the phone to a state as though the OS had just been installed.

The option to set a “duress password” that wipes the phone, in addition to one or more user passwords for separate user spaces, is a feature of Graphene OS intended to reduce the risk of coerced disclosure of data.

Mr. Tunick was arrested at the airport last December, but briefing on pre-trial motions is ongoing and no trial date is in sight.

This is an important test case on the issues raised by the “duress password”, the way it functions in Graphene OS, and compelled disclosure of passwords generally.

But there’s another concerning issue raised by the facts in this case: How airline reservations were used to target Mr. Tunick, in advance, for special treatment on arrival including seizure of his phone and pressure to disclose a password for the phone.

Mr. Tunick wasn’t singled out for “secondary screening” at random or because of anything he said or did or was carrying that appeared “suspicious” to CBP agents at the airport.

According to a report of a motion hearing in July, the transcript of which has not yet been released, CBP agents were sent an automatically generated email message before his flight got to Atlanta, alerting them in advance that a person in whom they had previously indicated an interest had reservations on a specific airline, flight number, date, and time.

While objectionable and, we believe, unconstitutional, this is neither new nor unusual. All air travelers to or from (or, since 2025, within) the US need to be aware that this is a feature of the system of suspicionless dragnet US government surveillance of air travel.

Airlines are required to send data from each passenger’s reservation to one or another component of the Department of Homeland Security (CBP for international flights or the TSA for domestic flights) before issuing a boarding pass. These reservations are processed by a complex, secret, multi-factor algorithm that determines whether to give the airline permission to issue a boarding pass, but that can also trigger other actions  — such as sending a TECS alert if the reservations matches criteria previously set by a Federal agent.

Any Federal law enforcement agent can set a TECS alert for a person, phone number, credit card number used for payment, or other information in a reservation, without the need for a warrant, any suspicion of a crime, or any review by a judge. This feature of TECS alerts makes them an ideal tool for Federal agents interested in searching a person for reasons other than suspicion of a crime, such as their disfavored but not illegal (and in many cases Constitutionally protected) political opinions or activities.

An agent doesn’t need to “search” for their target. They can simply set a TECS alert, including as much data as they have about their target, and then be automatically notified whenever their target makes reservations for international travel.

We’ve seen this before, and we’re seeing it again in the case of Mr. Tunick.

The apparent source of the police animus that led soem (as yet unnamed) Federal agent to set a TECS alert to flag Mr. Tunick for special mistreatment the next time he traveled abroad and then returned to the US was Mr. Tunick’s involvement in the lawful “Stop Cop City” political campaign against the construction of a large new police training center near Atlanta.

As long as airlines send data about all passengers and their itineraries to the government in advance, and these reservations are processed by a black box of secret action-triggering rules, this potential for political abuse of the system will continue.

This system should be abolished. In the meantime, all air travelers should be aware of this threat.