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New York eyes a 'breathlyzer' for texting while driving

timesunion.com

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Re: New York eyes a 'breathlyzer' for texting while driving

#31

Post by [deleted] »

sidlls wrote: post #18
vvanders wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

E911 pings should provide moving speed at the time of the text. An officer is going to take your Driver's License, so they should should be able to differentiate between you and your passengers.

How accurate are E911 pings? What if I give my phone to a passenger? My driver's license has literally nothing to do with that. My wife and I both have expensive smart phones. We frequently let the passenger use the driver's phone for, e.g. navigational purposes. If we get in an accident while I'm driving and my wife is using my phone to configure a route, how is a cop to know that?

[deleted]

Re: New York eyes a 'breathlyzer' for texting while driving

#32

Post by vvanders »

jimktrains2 wrote: post #27
vvanders wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

E911 pings should provide moving speed at the time of the text. An officer is going to take your Driver's License, so they should should be able to differentiate between you and your passengers.

> E911 pings should provide moving speed at the time of the text. Are E911 pings sent before you call 911? > Modern Enhanced 911 emergency systems (E911) systems automatically track the locations of people who call 911. This technology saves lives, as it allows emergency services to know the precise locations of callers. Like most technology, E911 also has a sinister side. Using a tactic called E911 pings, police can…

Pretty sure E911 piggybacks on the periodic pings that happen to towers. You cell phone needs to periodically hit the tower to determine CDMA power for the code division to work correctly. Either way positional(and extrapolated from that, speed) data is available to carriers.

Fair point on who's holding the phone but I think there are certain cases where it can be determined. I'll full agree that any solution isn't perfect, however the stakes of someone driving distracted are high enough that I think it's at least worth trying to tackle it.

Re: New York eyes a 'breathlyzer' for texting while driving

#33

Post by wyager »

throwfast1 wrote: post #24
Sargos wrote: post #9

This will be struck down by the courts so fast the ink won't even be dry. Your phone is the backbone of your life and contains pretty much all of your private information and allowing police to scoop all of that up without a warrant is blatantly unconstitutional.

at the rate of which laws are changing, I wish I could believe ideas like this would be immediately struck down however I suspect more laws like this will be created to our surprise on a consistent basis. the chief argument being, the law needs tools to protect its citizens. the sacrifice of privacy for security has been towards security on a consistent basis for a while now, I see no reason for that to change.

By "security" you mean the euphemistic term "security" which refers to executive powers. Actual security, the non-euphemistic kind, is inseparable from privacy.

Given that, you are absolutely correct. It's not surprising that the government has gradually given itself more executive powers; governments seldom do the opposite.

Re: New York eyes a 'breathlyzer' for texting while driving

#34

Post by problems »

finnn wrote: post #20

Anyone know where I can get one of these devices that can bypass the security of a smartphone and scrape it's contents? Also, will the mobile OS manufacturers be patching this gaping security hole?

I doubt it works as claimed. My phone when plugged in goes into charge only mode by default, there's not exactly much to exploit there when the data pins are turned off.

They mention the tech is glitchy, I'm guessing because their exploits fail on many devices.

Re: New York eyes a 'breathlyzer' for texting while driving

#35

Post by sandworm101 »

Constitutions normally only protect the content of communications, not the fact that communications occur. This isnt even the traditional metadata debate (inside v outside of an envalope). They dont care who or what you text, just the when and that you did. A mandatory tech that betrays only the time that a text was sent will probably survive legal scrutiny.

Re: New York eyes a 'breathlyzer' for texting while driving

#36

Post by problems »

Brendinooo wrote: post #19

This article was really light on technological details: >The technology is still in development. But the concept is a device that would use cutting-edge software to determine whether a person's smartphone was being used at the time of an accident. Does anyone know anything about what Cellebrite does? Their website feels jargon-y on the surface, didn't get a clear sense of what all they do on an initial visit. Is what…

Cellebrite sells phone exploits and "forensics tools" (read: exploits + data gathering) if I recall correctly.

Re: New York eyes a 'breathlyzer' for texting while driving

#37

Post by [deleted] »

Brendinooo wrote: post #19

This article was really light on technological details: >The technology is still in development. But the concept is a device that would use cutting-edge software to determine whether a person's smartphone was being used at the time of an accident. Does anyone know anything about what Cellebrite does? Their website feels jargon-y on the surface, didn't get a clear sense of what all they do on an initial visit. Is what…

[deleted]

Re: New York eyes a 'breathlyzer' for texting while driving

#38

Post by cmdrfred »

finnn wrote: post #20

Anyone know where I can get one of these devices that can bypass the security of a smartphone and scrape it's contents? Also, will the mobile OS manufacturers be patching this gaping security hole?

It also interestingly works on all devices evidently. I think it's vaporware it says it hasn't been developed yet.

Re: New York eyes a 'breathlyzer' for texting while driving

#39

Post by vvanders »

merpnderp wrote: post #8
vvanders wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On one hand, driving isn't a right and if you're piloting a 5k+ lb projectile at 70mph(or 50k+ in the case of some truckers I've seen texting + driving) you deserve to have the goddamn book thrown at you. It would be nicer if there was a way to do this without complete privacy invasion, at the bare minimum a warrant + request to your carrier for just timestamp metadata would make me much more comfortable.

So your argument is "think of the children" followed by "let's ticket the person even if they handed off their phone to a passenger to text, or texted at the stop light (legal in my state)?" And you'd be willing to normalize law enforcement snooping in our most private affairs for trivial traffic offenses?

Where didn't I mention children? :)

I've been run off the road, almost hit head-on and all sorts of other stupid shit that would have massive implications to my life and the life of my family from people texting + driving.

Hell, last month I got rear-ended by a state employee who was looking at her phone while stopped behind me and then struck my car during yield-merge.

Re: New York eyes a 'breathlyzer' for texting while driving

#40

Post by zabuni »

Brendinooo wrote: post #19

This article was really light on technological details: >The technology is still in development. But the concept is a device that would use cutting-edge software to determine whether a person's smartphone was being used at the time of an accident. Does anyone know anything about what Cellebrite does? Their website feels jargon-y on the surface, didn't get a clear sense of what all they do on an initial visit. Is what…

Judging from the release notes of their other products, which I assume this will be based on, it relies on exploits, or having the phone unlocked. So if you run a patched google phone or an iphone, they get nothing.

http://www.cellebrite.com/Releases/MobileForensics/UFED6.1_R...

The device lists makes and models of Android phones they can access, and ones they can bypass the lock. I have to assume they are using exploits. Especially with the lack of similar lists for Apple.

What I have to wonder though, are they getting a special version of the product, or is the euphemism or a digital "breathalyzer" just a way of dodging the fact that they want to do warrant less digital forensics on people's devices?

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