The harassment is targeted at critics & opponents of the current regime. The message is very clear: Be afraid of us. Be very afraid

There are 33 days remaining until election day. Vote out all the incumbents.

For US citizens entering the US: If you're concerned about protecting your data from this threat, you should use GrapheneOS (or less good would be a latest iPhone in lockdown mode) and not talk to the police. The 5th amendment does not seem to have an exception at the border, so you can't legally be compelled to hand over your password. They can lie, they can detain you, they can seize your stuff. You shouldn't be the one arguing with them, you should be silent and ask for an attorney. As a US citizen, you can refuse and still enter

GrapheneOS has demonstrated to be robust against physical access even in AFU [1]. It's still a good idea to shut down / restart because BFU is much more secure. To maintain convenience while avoiding reliance on the rate limiting of the secure element, you can use a long random passphrase as your primary unlock (you enter it every time the device is in BFU) and a fingerprint with a second factor pin as the secondary unlock.

Even if you factory reset your phone and backed up data (to an E2EE cloud provider, over Tor and memorized the credentials), you should still not disclose your password because it could allow evidence to be planted or your device to be compromised. Nothing you say to the border agents can help you in court, it can only be used against you.

The duress pin is generally not how you should handle a situation like this. You do not need the duress pin to prevent access, its purpose is if you're being physically coerced as well as to give the attacker the dillema of whether to enter a coerced password (it even gives this benefit for people that don't use the duress password).

Sure, if police are behaving illegally and the information that would be disclosed is worth the possible punishment, then that's a personal decision.

[1] Based on leaked Cellebrite documentation, GrapheneOS was the best performing device against AFU attacks. It also has a customizable reboot timer to bring the device back to BFU after a set time of not unlocking. The options are between 10 minutes and 72 hours of unlocking and 18 hours is the default iirc. Apple and Google likely copied but without the option to customize. Theirs are set at 72 hours.

If for whatever reason you think you're being investigated or surveilled (who knows for what these days, could be enough to just associate with the various protest groups / orgs), you can just assume that the border will be where they'll try to clone / download your data (phones, laptops, whatever)

If was arrested on suspicion of something, I can get legal assistance and I can know what I am suspected of and why before any of my property (or in this case, potentially very private and sensitive information) could be taken. If the arrest is manifestly wrongful or not based on any evidence, then I expect it would be easy enough to resist investigation.

On the other hand, having someone at the border who can justify an arbitrary search on the basis that "they might suspect of something", without having to clearly justify that basis and that if they then take property (or information), potentially copy it completely opaquely and then have zero accountability if that is misused is extremely frustrating but I guess you need to lobby your lawmakers to make the system fairer and to ensure legal protections of privileged information is completely upheld - period.

It's self explanatory.