[gruez]

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]

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]

> 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.