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Feds Walk into a Building and Demand Everyone's Fingerprints to Open Phones

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Re: Feds Walk into a Building and Demand Everyone's Fingerprints to Open Phones

#81

Post by NhanH »

roel_v wrote: post #70
yardie wrote: post #10

This is why my unlock is not tied to biometrics. Once I realized the government can compel you to unlock your phone without a warrant using your fingerprint it became a much less compelling feature. The same for facial recognition.

From a glance at your profile, you hardly seem to be a person a government would be interested in (maybe you're a drug king pin in your off hours, don't tell me if you are). What is your threat profile? If you loose your phone and some kid racks up a few hundreds $ in whatever one can buy through a phone nowadays, is that threat worth less to you than the convenience of fingerprint phone locking? Why would you give u…

Over a set of 100 million American with smartphone, statistically speaking quite a few of them would have to have a run in with the authority somehow.

> I mean, they can get comms metadata from carriers; speech comms content from wiretaps; email content through subpoenas (minus those you encrypt with client-side tools, a major pain to do on a phone anyway).

All of those things need to have their case present in front of a judge. And that is infact a major difference.

Re: Feds Walk into a Building and Demand Everyone's Fingerprints to Open Phones

#82

Post by sib »

ljf wrote: post #43
candiodari wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you travel ? In much if not all of Europe not giving your password, even to a random search when passing through (not entering the country), is a crime. Therefore legal advice is to provide custom agents and other police with access to any device upon request and then.

Really? Never heard of that in the UK or when travelling in Europe, but I could be wrong. Do you have any links to more information on this?

This, for example: https://wiki.openrightsgroup.org/wiki/Regulation_of_Investig...

Re: Feds Walk into a Building and Demand Everyone's Fingerprints to Open Phones

#83

Post by morganvachon »

roel_v wrote: post #71
adventured wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite fast response to disarm that is always: that's not up to you [whether or not you have something to hide]. I've found it instantly shakes the false comfort they're trying to derive from their premise and opens up a moment of rethink.

Not for me, I don't even understand your point. Of course it's up to me if I have something to hide. I have nothing on my phone that I wouldn't be perfectly OK with to have printed and displayed in a busy public place. How is it not up to me to decide what details of my life I have to hide?

Easy: Your contact list. You may not care who sees your list, but the people on your contact list would probably be upset if their private email address, cellphone number, chat name, home address and other personal data were exposed to the general public. Ditto any conversation you had with them via text; you may not care who sees the conversation, but your partner/friend/boss may object to having their privately texted words plastered all over Times Square.

Your GPS location data is another good one. Hypothetically speaking, would you really want the public, which contains some seedy characters mixed in with the "normal" people, to see the route you take to drop off/pick up your daughter at school, making her easy pickings for a kidnapping?

There's more than just the websites you browse and the people you talk to on your phone. It's a digital vault of every move you make, every question you ponder, every person you've interacted with, every store you shop at. Your banking data is there, your stocks, your hobbies, your bursts of anger, your outlook on life, your loved ones' and associates' addresses and contact information.

In short, you hurt more than yourself by exposing your private data, whether to the public at large, the government, or commercial entities seeking to hoover it up for advertising revenue. It's your responsibility to keep it private.

Re: Feds Walk into a Building and Demand Everyone's Fingerprints to Open Phones

#85

Post by stryk »

This is one reason I've always wanted to have two separate authentication credentials for one user. Unfortunately, I've yet to find an acceptable or easy way to implement that on any device that would need it (your phone, your laptop, any device which you want to keep stuff private). For example: have one authentication method that unlocks the device to the typical desktop environment, command line, or whatever -- just a typical GUI that people would expect to see upon logging in. And then have another (hidden) authentication method to unlock the device into the REAL meat & potatoes. Useful for situations like this when law enforcement demands it, or when TSA/Customs in a foreign country demand you open and boot your laptop at a foreign airport. Is there any way to implement this on Android, iOS, GNU/Linux, or Windows?

Re: Feds Walk into a Building and Demand Everyone's Fingerprints to Open Phones

#86

Post by dlp211 »

stryk wrote: post #85

This is one reason I've always wanted to have two separate authentication credentials for one user. Unfortunately, I've yet to find an acceptable or easy way to implement that on any device that would need it (your phone, your laptop, any device which you want to keep stuff private). For example: have one authentication method that unlocks the device to the typical desktop environment, command line, or whatever -- ju…

Truecrypt had something like this for PC's. The project shut down though.

Re: Feds Walk into a Building and Demand Everyone's Fingerprints to Open Phones

#87

Post by yardie »

candiodari wrote: post #34
yardie wrote: post #10

This is why my unlock is not tied to biometrics. Once I realized the government can compel you to unlock your phone without a warrant using your fingerprint it became a much less compelling feature. The same for facial recognition.

Do you travel ? In much if not all of Europe not giving your password, even to a random search when passing through (not entering the country), is a crime. Therefore legal advice is to provide custom agents and other police with access to any device upon request and then.

Yes, I travel a lot. Over 50 countries, 25 in the last 2 years as part of my sabbatical.

Sadly, I disagree. If I'm in a foreign country and I want legal advice I'll ask the local bar (or equivalent) about my rights. I'm simply not going to unlock my phone or incriminate myself just on the word of law enforcement.

I don't do anything criminal, this is about respect. If they feel I have done something wrong it's for them to prove it. I'm not going to do it for them.

Re: Feds Walk into a Building and Demand Everyone's Fingerprints to Open Phones

#88

Post by lisper »

eternalban wrote: post #61
lisper wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's what happens when large numbers of people decide they care about safety and security more than they care about freedom. That doesn't necessarily make it any better, but to attribute this outcome to mindlessness is to badly miss the point. The first step to solving a problem is to understand what the problem actually is .

Let's put this in its political context. We are citizens of a constitutional republic . A republic, as far as I understand it, implies that a (thoughtful, responsible, .., elected) minority is afforded the delegated power to legislate, judge, and administer. The 'actual problem' seems to be in the selection/delegation process. The minority that is currently in charge has framed the question as that of "safety and sec…

> A republic, as far as I understand it, implies that a (thoughtful, responsible, .., elected) minority is afforded the delegated power to legislate, judge, and administer.

Elected, yes. Thoughtful and responsible depends on your point of view. For example: there is a substantial contingent of people in the U.S. that want the country to be a Christian theocracy. (Most of these people believe that this is how things used to be, and they want to return to those halcyon days.) And so, unsurprisingly, these people vote for representatives who they think will advance that goal. So, for example, is Roy Moore "thoughtful and responsible"? If you're a member of this contingent then you probably think he is. If you're not, then you probably don't.

Likewise, there is a substantial contingent of people who are scared witless at the thought of terrorism, and think that it's worth trading in the odd civil right to insure that terrorists are not "free" to plot our destruction unmolested. There is a substantial contingent of people who are unrepentant racists who think black people are less than human and the root of all evil. Likewise for Muslims. All of these people not only don't care when "the bad guys" have their civil rights violated by the cops, they think it's a feature. They see the cops as courageous defenders of their point of view against the corrupting influence of pluralism and wussiness. The vaguaries of our electoral system make a difference at the margins (e.g. by gerrymandering) but none of these things would be possible if there were not millions of people who thought that it was good and proper.

The irony is that by blaming the system instead of acknowledging that the outcomes we see are the result of democracy working exactly as intended you are actually contributing to the problem, which is that everyone retreats into their echo chamber and spends their energy vilifying anyone who doesn't agree with them instead of working constructively to figure out how all 7+ billion of us are going to get along on this little planet.

Re: Feds Walk into a Building and Demand Everyone's Fingerprints to Open Phones

#89

Post by Terr_ »

rhizome wrote: post #13
yardie wrote: post #10

This is why my unlock is not tied to biometrics. Once I realized the government can compel you to unlock your phone without a warrant using your fingerprint it became a much less compelling feature. The same for facial recognition.

Yep. I got into a little argument with my brother over this last week, as he is a "I don't care, I have nothing to hide."

That only works if you trust the person looking.

If the authorities are seeking to blame or frame or shame... suddenly you have everything to hide.

Re: Feds Walk into a Building and Demand Everyone's Fingerprints to Open Phones

#90

Post by M_Grey »

KJP191 wrote: post #79
M_Grey wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh... why? I mean, burglars and hackers are usually very different people, and the former usually doesn't care about what's on your phone, just your phone. I grant however, that you could have a particular situation perhaps relating to your work which might alter that.

You think a thief won't go through an unlocked phone they stole? Even if they don't, the person they fence it to will.

I think whatever is on your phone would be of little or no interest to either party.
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