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Pair Locking Your iPhone

arkadiyt.com

181–190 of 308 posts

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#181

I think a cool product would be a cloud phone, where your phone is actually a VM in the cloud and your physical phone would be a bland minimal image. That way if they ever look at it they find nothing. But you can access your VM cloud phone from any device even a burner. You could even buy a burner at the airport after clearing customs and then log into your VM cloud phone.

Because the govt cant get your data from a cloud ?

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#182

You can also do a hardware mod by swapping some data pins on the connector and soldering a special cable just for you.

Any reason one couldn’t remove the lightning port entirely? And charge only wirelessly (Qi), using Bluetooth for audio?

Just cram a bunch of lint in the port :)

Always scares me when that happens

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#183
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t matter. If there’s truly no way to verify, there’s nothing they can do in a scalable way to determine people are lying about their main accounts. The only thing they can do is use fear to get you to comply, or make you doubt your deniable encryption scheme is truly secure. If they really wanted to could they find out? Perhaps. Maybe if they use CCTV footage and extract your phones screen and do comparisons or…

> Doesn’t matter. If there’s truly no way to verify, there’s nothing they can do in a scalable way to determine people are lying about their main accounts. It doesn't have to be scalable; border control already isn't scalable and relies on uniformed officers making decisions on the spot. It's not hard to add additional point in training that says, "if a person has suspiciously empty phone and the phone is a model X,…

You’re literally describing a way to make it scalable.

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#184
post #18

If you want to keep your phone secure, enable a long passcode, turn on full device encryption, and turn it off. If you are a US citizen, you can't be turned away at the border or forced to unlock the device. If you're not a US citizen or don't want to be harrassed by customs, bring a burner phone. Tools like Cellebrite can and do take advantage of security vulnerabilities. Turning off pair locking lulls users into a…

You can also press the lock button five times to make it refuse to unlock without a valid passcode.

Just tried that (iPhone 8) and it did reject my fingerprint but only after issuing a loud WHOOP WHOOP “Emergency SOS” and 3 second countdown to make an emergency call (presumably 911).

Hardly a stealth move to pull at the border!

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#185
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried to restore your phone? Especially while on LTE/3G or hotel WiFi? It's an absolute pain in the ass, takes a couple of hours, not to mention you have to set up Apple Pay again. Deal with 2FA changes because you can't back up Google Authenticator.

Use authy for authentication https://authy.com/blog/authy-vs-google-authenticator/

If this was an independent review I would take it more serious, but it comes from authy directly.

Serious question tho, can Authy be used on any website that supports Google Authenticator?

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#186
post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried to restore your phone? Especially while on LTE/3G or hotel WiFi? It's an absolute pain in the ass, takes a couple of hours, not to mention you have to set up Apple Pay again. Deal with 2FA changes because you can't back up Google Authenticator.

I did it each time I got new iPhone before "transfer data to the new device" was available. No issues.

That would imply having your other phone available. The original suggestion was to clean your phone, and then restore it from a backup. So the whole "transfer data to the new device" wouldn't work.

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#188
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally you have all your check bags with you when going through customs.

I always get my checked bag after going through customs

Really? I typically go through immigration control, then get my bags, then go through customs.

I can’t imagine how you could go through customs without your bags and have them have specific evidence of your customs violation. I always assumed that’s why some airports make you manually handle luggage and “carry it over a line” to give back for rechecking.

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is simply crossing a border a "reasonable" search and seizure under the Fourth Amendment? Is there a legal precedent for that?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_search_exception Since the first border search statute was enacted in 1789, customs officials have essentially been authorised to search anything crossing the border, without warrant. It was approved by the first US congress, which counted James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, George Washington and John Adams among its members. The original target was ships that might be carrying tax…

Thanks for the pointer.

It seems like it's not so clear-cut, with lots of fine legal points around search on person vs. property, digital vs. analog/physical "goods", the individual suspicion requirement etc etc.:

>>At a minimum, the Eleventh Circuit’s decision makes clear that this issue isn’t likely to resolve itself. The case for clarity from a higher court—or from Congress—is only getting stronger.

https://www.lawfareblog.com/summary-circuit-split-device-sea...

I find it lamentable that the people who sued the US Government for the legality of these searches were both involved with child pornography.

Re: Pair Locking Your iPhone

#190
post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always get my checked bag after going through customs

Really? I typically go through immigration control , then get my bags, then go through customs . I can’t imagine how you could go through customs without your bags and have them have specific evidence of your customs violation. I always assumed that’s why some airports make you manually handle luggage and “carry it over a line” to give back for rechecking.

You are right. I was thinking immigration control.
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