In my (European) country now we can have a digital copy of the driving license on the phone. It specifically says that it’s valid to be presented to law enforcement officers during a check.
I saw amazed in the beginning. They went from limited beta testing to full scale nationwide launch in just two months. Unbelievable. And I even thought “wow this is so convenient I won’t need to take the wallet with me anymore”. I installed the government app and signed up with my government id and I got my digital driving license.
Then yesterday I got stopped by a random roadblock check and police asked me my id card. I was eager to immediately try the new app and show them the digital version, but then because music was playing via Bluetooth and I didn’t want to pause it, i just gave the real one.
They took it and went back to their patrol for a full five minutes while they were doing background checks on me.
That means if I used the digital version, they would had unlimited access to all my digital life. Photos, emails, chats, from decades ago.
What are you are going to do, you expect that they just scan the qr code on the window, but they take the phone from your hand. Are you going to complain raising doubts? Or even say “wait I pin the app with a lock so you can’t see the content?”
“I have nothing to hide” but surely when searching for some keywords something is going to pop-up. Maybe you did some ironic statement and now they want to know more about that.
And this is a godsend for the secret services. They no longer need to buy zero day exploits for infecting their targets, they can just cosplay as a patrol and have the victim hand the unlocked phone, for easy malware installation
Immediately uninstalled the government app, went back to traditional documents.
I would be more concerned that they would use my credit card. While my phone is unlocked.
This is the biggest issue I have with them. The only way this will work in modern society where the police can’t be trusted, is if the ID is accessible while the rest of the device is locked down.
And that’s really only possible if Apple and Google integrate that directly into the OS.
It is.
Apole has “guided access”, android has “pin app”.
I only have experience with the latter, it works by opening the task management view, and selecting “pin application” on a running app.
That then locks the device to that app. To access anything else, it has to be unlocked as if the screen were locked.
App Pinning DOES NOT lockdown the device, even if you have it set to require a PIN to unpin, biometrics still work to unlock the device.
It also gives you a warning that personal data may still be accessible and the pinned app can open other apps. It specifically says “Only use app pinning with people you trust”… which is the exact opposite of the use case here. And app pinning is turned off by default, you have go go searching in the settings to enable the ability.
Was definitely on by default on my device.
Personal data is still accessible, if the app you choose to pin is something like the dialer, or your mail app, then yes, you can obviously access contacts and emails. The feature doesn’t block the pinned app from accessing everything it normally accesses.
As for opening other apps, this applies to stuff like links or launchers. If the app has links somewhere, you could open your default browser app. It does not allow you to “escape” the pinned app to anywhere else in the system, unless the pinned app has a way to launch other apps the way launchers do.
The feature could certainly use improvement, but if it were only useful with people you trust, it would be pointless.
It’s obviously intended for situations where you have to let someone use your phone, and don’t want to give them free reign. With people you trust, you wouldn’t need something like that.
It’s far better than nothing, and is in fact part of android.
To add to this, a lot of what keeps us safe is the friction of bureaucracy. Authoritarians cannot micromanage every decision you make or round up every person they want because those actions take time and resources that aren’t infinite. But you can reduce the time and resources required if you make identification more convenient and therefore enforcement more targeted. Maybe now they can justify making you present ID every time you pay cash at Starbucks, buy a backpack, get on a bus, use a bike share, watch hot snuff porn, you name it.
Every country in Europe that has vastly better privacy laws than the US, also already has national ID since forever.
Now they even became electronic biometric IDs, and I still don’t need to show it whenever I buy a loaf of bread.
Even if, why would anyone ever want to bother when they could just track your payment cards?
I have the digital id in case i forget my physical one (despite not legaly being required to carry id) but its in an empty graphene os profile.
You can pin the app (android) or have it in guided access mode (ios). Although, yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s an exploit to get out and access memory it shouldn’t. Maybe if you install the govt spyware app in a different user profile (Android) then it will be restricted to that certain memory.
that’s odd. in south africa while we don’t have a digital license the physical ones do have a code. they scan the code and that’s it. they never take the license unless they asking for a bribe.
You’re absolutely right about the danger of giving up your phone, if the police wanted to take it from you. By sticking with traditional documents you remove any pretense they might have to try. It is not a stupid call, it’s just less convenient - but then, security is always a compromise with accessibility.
Why is nobody mentioning that by installing it and authenticating, there is sweet fuck all you can do to stop them tracking your movements and downloading your whole address book so they can see who you Associate with?
Taking the phone isn’t the problem if they are already in it.
In most phones it is possible to set permissions (to contacts, locaton, etc) for every app.
You have to explicitly allow that, at least on android. However, most people hit allow and don’t think anyways :/
Oh nice, no contacts or internal storage stuff!
There are camera and location permissions listed. AFAIK my ID card doesn’t have those.
I think that might just be to scan qr codes. And unless you’ve got a very shitty phone, that camera can’t run without the app being active.
You do close your apps, right?
Yeah, I do.
iOS too. Permissions can even be given only while the app is active if it “requires” them, or for location for example an approximate one is sufficient.
Yep, but there was some news about that recently. Apparently their security doesn’t quite work as it should. Perhaps that’s been fixed by now, but then again, Apple does not have a great reputation there.
Honestly, I wouldn’t worry about all the comments discussed here. Mainly because the governments already have access to everything and I mean EVERYTHING. They will get a subpoena in under a minute if they want to check something regarding your digital life. Not condoning it, just a fact of present life.
Pit it on another phone that you keep in your car or another profile with nothing else on it
A phone that still has your GPS tracking data stored in it?
…no
I mean you’re carrying it around, right?
That sounds like carrying an ID card with extra steps.
There’s a good chance they have a Cellebrite in their car and will copy your entire phone’s storage over.
Forensic acquisition tools like Cellebrite take hours to clone storage. Not saying they wouldn’t do it, just saying that legitimate acquisition that can be used against you has to be collected in a very certain way for it to be proof.
And you’ll get a tinfoil hat as a reward
Yeah because the police using a commercially available and ridiculously cheap device to copy data from your phone is totally unbelievable. I must be the crazy one.
News flash, they’re not FBI tier ultra classified tools anymore, you can find them on eBay for less than $1000. There’s a good chance that’s cheaper than the phone you have right now. You think a police department who is already intent on scrolling through your phone while “checking your ID” wouldn’t just put one in every cruiser?
You think a government can ask a couple of dozen thousand, barely literate goons to do something like this without the word getting out within a week?
Yes, and phones have up to 1000gb of storage nowadays. It’ll take a minute :p
In Brazil, the officer just uses their own phone to scan a validation QR on the ID app, at no point your phone leaves your hand and in a few seconds the officer has what they need. Shouldn’t this be the case in the EU? AFAIK the officers only take your physical ID to check the number, so if you’re using the app they shouldn’t need to confirm that as the info is already validated
Isn’t it impressive that we in Brazil sometimes create the best and most simple solutions to problems, but no one will imitate us and will keep insisting in their problematic systems, because we are the third world and supposedly can’t get anything right? It’s sad when we end up replacing our own good things, because even we think we’re inferior in everything and can’t come up with a good solution for anything.
For all that Russia is an imperialist police state, our e-government services are pretty slick too
Say what you will about the country, but gov.br and PIX put everything else to shame and no one even came close to something like that
I love SUS too.
As op said, the whole point is to get you to hand your phone over unlocked. Thats the point.
But you’re not handing your phone over, it stays in your hand and if there’s a QR code to scan they’ll scan it with the phone in your hand
I believe EU also requires that you give up login credentials if they are biometric in nature. Meaning if you use a fingerprint reader or face unlock you are required to provide that to law enforcement when asked. So either way if they want your phone’s contents they can get it.
They need a warrant or probable cause for that, but yes they can compel it unlike a password. It’s still a search and needs to be lawfully done in the first place.
I wonder if they are referring to this, or to an EU equivalent of it:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has ruled that police officers can compel a suspect to unlock their phone using a fingerprint without violating the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination.
Right, but they can’t just do it without reason which he was implying, and he replied to me with
“Yea but that wasn’t the point of me pointing it out. The point was that they don’t need to resort to such measures in order to clandestinely acquire your unlocked phone.”
In this case he was on parole where they have the right to search him. That mention of blood draw etc, you’re already under arrest and they can search your person anyway.
I’m not aware of any law where a cop can walk up to you on the street and demand they unlock your phone with biometrics and search it without cause.
On re-reading that other guys comments, they just make no sense. You are right to draw your distinction, because this thread is being strangely vague on details and trying to encourage conspiratorial thinking without specifics.
That said, I think the core concern can be rephrased in a way that gets at the essence, and to me there’s still a live issue that’s not relieved simply by noting that this requires probable cause.
What’s necessary to establish probable cause in the United States has been dramatically watered down to the point that it’s a real time, discretionary judgment of a police officer, so in that respect it is not particularly reassuring. It can be challenged after the fact in court, but it’s nevertheless dramatically watered down as a protection. And secondly, I don’t think any of this hinges on probable cause to begin with, because this is about the slow creep normalization of surveillance which involves changes to what’s encompassed within probable cause itself. The fact that probable cause now encompasses this new capability to compel biometric login is chilling even when you account for probable cause.
And moreover, I think there’s a bigger thematic point here about a slow encroach of surveillance in special cases that eventually become ubiquitous (the manhunt for the midtown shooter revealed that practically anyone in NYC is likely to have their face scanned, and it was a slow-creep process that got to that point), or allow the mixing and matching of capabilities in ways that clearly seem to violate privacy.
Another related point, or perhaps different way of saying the same thing above, is that this should be understood as an escalation due to the precedent setting nature of it, which sets the stage for considering new contexts where, by analogy to this one, compelled biometric login can be regarded as precedented and extensions of the power are considered acceptable. Whatever the next context is where compelled biometric login is considered, it will at that point no longer be a new idea without precedent.
Yea but that wasn’t the point of me pointing it out. The point was that they don’t need to resort to such measures in order to clandestinely acquire your unlocked phone.
Convenience always has a cost
Pit it on another phone that you keep in your car or another profile with nothing else on it
Yup, if you hand them your unlocked phone they can look through it.
NSA has all your info already anyway
more certainty and specificity is more betterer
