All 27 EU member states have backed a joint statement rejecting the Turkey-Libya maritime memorandum, which the EU said on Wednesday, “violates the sovereign rights of third States” and “does not comply with the Law of the Sea”.

The statement, issued by EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, said the 2019 memorandum is “null and void and cannot produce legal consequences for third States”.

The EU said it “deeply regrets” its ratification by the Libyan parliament on 20 October.

The bloc said its position was “firm and clear” and had been set out in European Council conclusions in December 2019 and repeated in June 2025.

It said it has a strategic interest in a stable and secure Eastern Mediterranean and called on all countries to respect the sovereign rights of every member state, in line with EU law and international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

Kallas added that good neighbourly relations and progress on the Cyprus settlement process were of high importance.

European Council president Antonio Costa and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen offered “solidarity” to Greece and Cyprus.

They said the agreement “does not comply with the law of the sea” and reiterated the EU’s “well-known position against any outside interference in Libya”.

The Libyan parliament voted unanimously on Tuesday to adopt the agreement.

It states that the exclusive economic zones of Libya and Turkey share a border in the Mediterranean, located south-east of the Greek island of Crete.

Turkey signed the deal in 2019 with the Libyan government of national accord, but it had not been ratified by Libya’s legislature until now.

The government of national unity replaced that administration in 2021 and is the only internationally recognised government of Libya.

Turkey’s MIT intelligence chief Ibrahim Kalin was in Libya on Tuesday to meet Prime Minister Abdulhamid Dbeibah.

The Cypriot foreign ministry called the memorandum “illegal, null and void”, while Athens said, “geography and the international law of the sea do not change with unilateral, legally unfounded parliamentary decisions”.

Both countries are signatories to the UN convention on the law of the sea, though Turkey is not, and Libya signed it in 1984 but never ratified it.

Egypt said on Wednesday that it categorically rejects the ratification by the Libyan parliament of a 2019 maritime memorandum with Turkey, warning Ankara that it will not allow its sovereign rights in the Eastern Mediterranean to be questioned.

In a Foreign Ministry statement, Cairo said the memorandum is “absolutely null and void” and produces no legal effect for Egypt.

It said the deal violates the principles of the law of the sea and the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which govern the delimitation of exclusive economic zones and continental shelves.

The ministry described the memorandum as a clear violation of Egypt’s sovereign rights in its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and continental shelf.

It said Egypt had opposed the agreement before and rejects any act by any party based on it.

As the memorandum contradicts Egypt’s declared maritime borders, Cairo said it “reserves its right to protect its rights” under international law and to confront any attempt to violate them.

The Libyan parliament voted unanimously on Tuesday to ratify the agreement, about seven years after it was signed by the internationally recognised Libyan government and Turkey.

Israel also condemned the vote, with its foreign ministry saying on X that the decision “violates the sovereign rights of our close allies in the region”, and that “unfortunately, once again we see Turkey acting with the aim of destabilising the Eastern Mediterranean region,” it said.

European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas raised the issue with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan in Brussels on Wednesday.

She said she told him the vote “infringes upon the sovereign rights of third states”.

European Council president Antonio Costa and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen earlier said they “deeply regret” the ratification.

They likewise said the deal “does not comply with the law of the sea” and “is null and void”.

Greece and Cyprus object to the agreement on the grounds that Turkey and Libya do not share a maritime border, since islands are each entitled to a full exclusive economic zone.

One of the unfortunate quirks of the American system is that you can't lie to the government, but the government can lie to you. Samuel Tunick found himself on the receiving end of this setup last year at Atlanta International Airport. When agents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) asked for his phone password, he allegedly gave them a self-destruct code that wiped his data. Tunick now faces five years in prison for destroying evidence.

It turns out that the feds were lying to Tunick the entire time. A new court filing, first reported by 404 Media, shows that the DHS had sent out an order to seize Tunick's phone over his involvement in environmentalist protests in Atlanta. When he landed at the airport, however, agents told Tunick that they were looking for "kiddie porn" and he would be allowed to leave with his phone if he cooperated. They also repeatedly denied him access to his lawyer when he asked.

"There can be no real debate that if law enforcement had acted similarly elsewhere in Atlanta, their actions would be unconstitutional. But the government says it was entitled to act this way because Mr. Tunick was returning from an international vacation" in the Dominican Republic, his lawyers wrote in the filing, which includes internal DHS communications and excerpts from his interrogation video.

U.S. law recognizes a "border exception" to Fourth Amendment privacy rights, allowing federal agents to search incoming travelers for contraband. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) claims that this exemption also allows them to hold travelers for questioning and search their electronic data. Tunick's case reveals just how widely the agency stretches this loophole.

A few hours before Tunick landed, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agent Travis Mcghie emailed the CBP station in Atlanta with his photo and information, stating that he is under investigation for "suspected terrorist activities." (Tunick is involved in Save the Atlanta Forest, also known as Stop Cop City, a protest movement against a local police training center.) The email asked CBP to "conduct a 100% baggage exam, retain all electronics and collect passcodes," stating that the HSI will be at the airport to conduct an interrogation.

Pulled into the secondary screening room, Tunick "almost immediately" told CBP officers that "I don't really want to speak without a lawyer any more," according to the filing, which cites the interrogation tape. He would ask for a lawyer multiple times.

The agents asked Tunick if he had "kiddie porn" on his phone and stated that "because you're refusing to talk, we have the authority to go through your phone to see what we're looking for." One of them, Latoya Castro, told Tunick that "either you can give us your password so that we can go through it no problem, or you can refuse to do that, unfortunately, we will have to seize your phone."

Both of those statements were a lie, of course. The HSI's email had asked CBP to take Tunick's phone, whether or not he cooperated.

The lie about child porn may not only have been meant to intimidate Tunick. While there are contradictory lower court rulings about the border search exemption, some courts have ruled that the CBP can only search electronics for "digital contraband," or files that are themselves illegal. A search for child sex abuse material would be on stronger legal ground than a search for mere evidence of other crimes.

Tunick was using GrapheneOS, a secure phone system that allows users to set both a real password and a "duress password" that wipes out all data when entered. The interrogation tape shows his phone appearing to reset after he gave the officers a passcode. HSI agent Nathan Burnham and FBI agent Andrea Coble then entered the room.

"You are not under arrest. Once these gentlemen are done with you, pursuant to your entry into the country, you're free to leave," Burnham said, referring to the CBP officers.

Tunick's lawyers argue that the judge should throw out the phone password Tunick provided and everything that resulted from entering it as an "involuntary" response made under "unlawful interrogation," because the CBP agents did not read Tunick his Fifth Amendment rights and ignored his multiple requests to consult with his lawyer before answering their questions.

The CBP claims that secondary screening at the border doesn't count as a criminal investigation, so detainees don't have the same rights as criminal suspects. "Since the international arrivals inspection is an administrative function, CBP policy and federal regs do not permit the presence of lawyers during secondary examinations," a spokesman told Reason earlier this year.

But Tunick's lawyers insist that his experience was "far outside" a normal border crossing: He was accused of a serious crime to his face, faced an investigation for a different serious crime he didn't know about, and clearly could not leave the situation until he gave information to government agents.

"I hope people understand that the charges against me are meant to intimidate people against protecting their data and their privacy, and the government hopes to set a precedent that no one has the right to privacy," Tunick told 404 Media. 

Defend the Atlanta Forest, the movement that Tunick is involved with, has been a major nuisance for authorities in Georgia. Protesters attacked and burned construction equipment throughout 2022, and police shot a protester in 2023 under unclear circumstances, claiming that they were fired at during a raid.

The Trump administration has brought down the federal government against the movement. In June 2026, the Department of Justice brought federal charges against two alleged arsonists, citing National Security Presidential Memo 7, which directs the feds to go after left-wing domestic terrorism.

But beyond the email line about "suspected terrorist activities," there is no indication of what specific crimes the feds suspected Tunick of, or why they suspected him. And the whole setup of the interrogation was designed to hide those answers. In fact, instead of charging Tunick under typical obstruction or evidence-destruction laws, federal prosecutors chose a rarely-used statute that doesn't require them to disclose what the underlying investigation was about.

"Many times the government wants to highlight what it was trying to investigate because that ups the stakes on what the defendant was doing," former prosecutor Daniel Richman told The New York Times. "This is a case where I think they're trying to avoid exactly that by focusing only on the destruction, and not what the investigation was about." 

The post Homeland Security Lied About Child Porn To Search Activist's Phone appeared first on Reason Magazine.