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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

#41

Post by throwfast1 »

tptacek wrote: post #26
throwfast1 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

At the rate which laws are changing? Can you be as specific as you can about the priors you're using to generate this conclusion?

caught me, I am grumbling about net-neutrality and my inability to keep up with what is going on.

the tiff between fbi and apple[0] I see as woefully unresolved. and my concern is when I hear politicians discuss it I hear in my brain the following "we need silicon valley to give us tools, they are creative and smart and I'm sure they can do it" this is not unique to D or R I actually think I recall Hillary making a comment along those lines that I do not have time to track down right now. lastly what about ISPs having their new rights to our privacy [1][2], in regards to [2] there were many that sprouted some collectecting a few hundred thousand dollars... what became of them I do not know.

I suspect some agreement with apple will be reached, or worse which I am incapable of imagining. The government persists and I do not think the general populace has the vigilance to keep up. comments like "

comments like that of Eric Schmidt (I am paraphrasing) -- Those who are doing nothing wrong have nothing to hide.. I pulled an all nighter and see myself grumbling but I feel this is coherent enough for others to fill in blanks. I feel powerless to change the current state of affairs and the trajectory we are heading.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/feb/17/inside-th... [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/03/senate-puts-isp-profit... [2] https://www.gofundme.com/BuyCongressData

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

#42

Post by darknoon »

mediaman wrote: post #25

The article mentions this technology is still glitchy. But how will it ever become non-glitchy? Police will not be able to constitutionally require you to provide a passcode if the phone is locked and there is established case law to support this, so the device would have to scan the phone without a passcode. Doesn't existing security on modern phones (the iPhone's secure enclave, for example) make this extremely dif…

Older iPhones have exploits that allow bypassing some or all of the protections. It's likely exploits will be found or have been found against current (iPhone 7) hardware given the economic incentives. Nonetheless, I am not aware of any out in the wild.

As for android phones, afaik you're pretty boned.

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

#44

Post by math0ne »

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.

It would just have to be written into the terms of your license like current breathalyzer laws are right?

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

#45

Post by jncraton »

darknoon wrote: post #42
mediaman wrote: post #25

The article mentions this technology is still glitchy. But how will it ever become non-glitchy? Police will not be able to constitutionally require you to provide a passcode if the phone is locked and there is established case law to support this, so the device would have to scan the phone without a passcode. Doesn't existing security on modern phones (the iPhone's secure enclave, for example) make this extremely dif…

Older iPhones have exploits that allow bypassing some or all of the protections. It's likely exploits will be found or have been found against current (iPhone 7) hardware given the economic incentives. Nonetheless, I am not aware of any out in the wild. As for android phones, afaik you're pretty boned.

That's a little alarmist. Apple at least appears to take iOS security seriously, so if there was a known flaw that was actively being used to extract data in the wild it would get patched very quickly.

Why do assert that Android phones are just broken? Even with traditional full device encryption without specialized hardware support, it is very difficult to extract keys from a running device without some sort of known vulnerability.

I find it highly unlikely that anyone could build a simple device that someone like a State Trooper could use to pull usable information off an encrypted phone made in the last two years old with any kind of reliability.

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

#46

Post by djschnei »

sandworm101 wrote: post #35

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.

4A makes no distinction between content/things and actions. A timeline of my actions is absolutely something I am (should be) secure in.

Furthermore, the idea that privacy means secrecy is too narrow even when we think only about personal information, like the contents of a journal. Suppose I give you my diary and urge you to read it. No one would think you are violating my privacy when you do so. The reason is that privacy is not about the information itself, no matter how personal it may be. Instead, this aspect of privacy – informational privacy – is about my right to control what other see, and in this example I have given you my permission.

Privacy has less to do with the information we conceal from the world than with the close and trusted people that we determine to share our information with.

My Actions, i.e. the act of communicating, is absolutely protected under the original intent of the fourth amendment. Now, that means very little nowadays, but your statement - "Constitutions normally only protect the content of communications, not the fact that communications occur" - is patently untrue.

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

#47

Post by fuzzywalrus »

I just don't know how this could be provable? Either there's an OS level log that you're signing your life away on that is a huge privacy risk (and requires OS level engineering) or they're just guesstimating off data use. I can't see how they'd be able to differentiate from a hands free UX interaction from one done physically. Also, if in a car of multiple people, it begs the question who is responsible for using the phone? When traveling with friends/family/significant others/guests often we hand off our device for media usage.

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

#48

Post by rblatz »

math0ne wrote: post #44
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.

It would just have to be written into the terms of your license like current breathalyzer laws are right?

That rule is treading a very thin line, if the government can't legally compel you to do something they are reserving the right to deny you basically every "privilege" they can. At a certain point the government could basically prevent you from being able to go about a normal life for not waiving your rights on demand for nearly anything. It seems like this specific instance is possibly on the ok side of the line, but if so just barely.

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

#49

Post by jimktrains2 »

johnfn wrote: post #30
ColinCochrane wrote: post #23

It seems like there are a couple big issues with this. 1) What if your passenger was using your phone? 2) What if you using voice-commands to send a text (especially if via CarPlay, etc...)?

True, passenger in the car does blow a hole through this. But that's only something like 5% of cars, so it'd be easy to only target the other 95%. Voice to text is certainly harder to prove right now. To me (and I know this will be a controversial opinion) I feel this is something smart phone manufacturers should work together with the government on. A simple "has a text been manually entered in the last x minutes" r…

> To me (and I know this will be a controversial opinion) I feel this is something smart phone manufacturers should work together with the government on. A simple "has a text been manually entered in the last x minutes" read out feels like a non slippery slope that may save lives by proxy.

It wouldn't save lives -- it's only useful after the fact. My phone shouldn't spy or taddle on me (more than's already required to connect to the cell network.)

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

#50

Post by merpnderp »

vvanders wrote: post #39
merpnderp wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Everyone has had incidents like thsi. I had a semi cross three lanes of traffic at once and almost kill my son and I on the interstate. He was on his phone. Held it up and waved apologetically as I passed him. Still not a valid reason to let law enforcement have trivial access to people's most personal information.
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