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In Iowa, a Phone App Could Serve As Driver's License
New submitter dubner writes Simply hand the law enforcement officer your mobile phone. That's what you can do in Iowa rather than "digging through clutter in your glove compartment for an insurance card." And soon your driver's license will be available on your phone too, according to a story in the (Des Moines Register). Iowans will soon be able to use a mobile app on their smartphones as their official driver's license issued by the Iowa Department of Transportation. Some marvelous quotes in TFA: "The new app should be highly secure ... People will use a pin number for verification." And "Branstad (Iowa governor)... noted that even Iowa children are now working on digital development projects." A raft of excuses ("battery's dead") and security problems come to mind; how would you implement such a system?
Well, that's one way for the police to get easy access to your phone without a warrant.
Does this sound like a convenient way for Police to have unfettered access to your phone, in light of Riley v. California?
Big brother has made it more convenient for you to always carry the necessary documentation. It's every citizen's duty to make sure they have the necessary papers before they travel.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Simply hand the law enforcement officer your mobile phone.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Seriously, I'm getting tired of the endless stream of apps.
The world is an app, I have an app, everybody has an app ... it's lots of hype, and very little long-term proven benefit.
I really hope we reach peak app soon, and people STFU about apps.
Yes, fine, you have software. We've had software for decades. But now it's on a phone or a tablet. So it's an app, and it's super awesome, and we need to dedicate countless hours of coverage to it.
And every drooling idiot is racing to ensure they're stuff is available on an app, and telling us how our lives will be improved and perfected by apps, and how if we're not writing an app we'll fall behind and become fossilized.
You know what? Millions of people don't use smart phones, don't use an app for everything, and can conclude our normal bodily functions without relying on an app.
I bet 99.9% of all apps are crap, or won't be around in 5 years. But, like the .com era, you can become a billionaire by saying you have an idea for an app.
Blah blah blah .. take your damned app and get off my lawn.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Among other things it's basically giving them permission to search through my phone if they feel like it. Nope, I'll stick to a physical card.
Even with a physical drivers license, they always try to grab your entire wallet before you can pull out the driver license from it.
In California, it's not like they even need my drivers license (motorcycle police officers excluded). Most of the times, the cops in cop cars can already pull any Californian's drivers license from their onboard laptop.
The only thing I'm not sure about is their cell phone coverage. I assume they may not be able to download your data if they're outside of a 4G/3G cell phone coverage area.
The Supreme Court over there recently ruled that warrantless searches on mobiles belonging to arrestees are legal. If you refuse to hand over your phone/licence in CA because of whatever's on your phone or because you fear the privacy boogeyman, they'll just arrest you and use the precedent to search your phone anyway.
I said this shit was coming. I said it fucking years ago, even before contactless payments with iOS and RFID chips embedded in handsets.
So fucking glad I don't have a working phone.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
Sept 26 a South Carolina man was shot by police for re-entering his truck to retrieve his drivers license as requested by the police officer. It happens all the time.
A "license" isn't a thing--it's a right or privilege to do or not do something. The State keeps a complete record of you and the scope of your driving license at the Department of Licensing. All they need is a fingerprint, or maybe even optical recognition of your face, and they can access that data from their patrol car.
An "app" as a "license" is just as archaic as a paper license today.
Don't the police have computers? Can't they just query the DMV themselves? Maybe I need to sell an app that displays a fake ID on your phone if this is what they depend on.
Like many apps, the Driver's License app will probably require access to your SMSes, phone call record, contacts, calendar, location, and photos for no good reason at all. You'll also need to wait in a queue for a few minutes to view your driver's license, but you can use an in-app purchase to skip the line.
How can you safely produce your wallet, which usually resides in your pocket? If you're all fired up worried about getting shot, put your hands on the hood of the car and tell them which pocket your phone is in. Having had my share of traffic violations requiring identification, it's never been an issue. Then again, I'm not black, so I get a lot more leeway in what constitutes a threatening move and what doesn't.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
This seems to be a way to get your cell phone out of your hand and into the hands of the police, without a warrant, and your permission.
SCOTUS recently ruled that the police can't search your phone without your permission, absent a warrant. Now you get pulled over, and you have to hand your unlocked cell phone to the nice police officer, while he leaves your site and goes to his car for 5 minutes or so.
Now he has the opportunity to see what else you might have on your phone.
As a bonus, since he has your phone, you can't use it to record your interaction with him.
What is wrong with the piece of plastic in my wallet? It has worked well for a long time. If my State offered it, I might add it to my phone for fun, but I would still have the wallet card to give to a police officer.
Facial recognition could be used to make the look-ups faster and more accurate. And most drivers are associated with one or two vehicles, so the police could have someone's picture up before they even approach the driver in most cases.
With a driver license, it's really _you_ who will be trying to convince the police officer that you have a valid license. So facial recognition isn't really needed. You're right, most of the time a police officer taking a photo of your license plate could automatically be shown photos of one or sometimes two people who are most likely driving the car and are in the system as having a license or as having no license.
If nothing comes up or the driver doesn't meet the pictures, the driver would need to give the police officer information that leads to the license. Typically name and birthday, or address, or even license number if you learned it by heart and don't want to give your name. Then same thing, the information is looked up and a picture shown to the police officer.
Problem would be if you lost your license and gave your twin brother's information. Knowing that information is probably much easier than stealing his driving license.
What is really amazing, and just freeking audacious to say the least, is how the IDOT is even considering doing this.
With all the recent focus on digital privacy, etc, especially since the "outing" of the NSA via Snowden, with the protests against police brutality a la Ferguson, etc, it just amazes me that something like this would even be considered. Amazing.
Who in their right mind would hand their unlocked cell phone to law enforcement?
The reality is, they are always looking for something, anything, any scrap of information, or anything misconstrued or misinterpreted, to be USED AGAINST YOU.
People keep forgetting, it doesn't matter if you haven't done anything wrong or not. That doesn't matter and never did. There are loads of Americans out there who have been "put through the ringer"(putting it mildly) by LE who were honest people who never did anything wrong.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Offer drivers low-cost or free phone cases with space to hold their driver's license on the back. Driver pulls their phone out of their pocket (it's likely more accessible than their wallet) and shows/hands the back of the phone to the officer.
Offer drivers a holder that attaches via suction cups or similar mechanism to their dashboard. Find some way (driver's license doubles as an EZPass? Cops have a scanner that lets them bring up the driver's information more quickly when they stop a motorist, rather than having to take it back to their vehicle?) to encourage drivers to put their licenses in that holder while they're driving.
The privacy and security considerations are strong arguments against turning the driver's license into an app or something similar. But if they really want a high-tech solution, working with phone manufacturers to create a lock screen app (open source, to reduce the chances of a back door) that allows a police officer to enter a code (which gets logged on the phone manufacturer's servers and should be able to be associated with the individual officer) into the lock screen to display JUST the license info, not actually unlock the phone. This would also be useful if a phone is lost, stolen, or used as part of a crime; it would allow the police to identify the owner.
Granted, it could be loosely inferred / deduced based on other relateable elements.
Additionally, as states are not required to share DMV records, or at least I don't think they are, lost my train of thought... Something relational data missing content, etc.
The FAA has been trying to point out this fact for decades. The paper pilots carry around isn't a pilots license, it is a certificate of license. The license is held in a computer somewhere and when that is revoked, the paper saying you have a license is meaningless.
around here, police verifies all data you give them (licence, vehicle registration, insurance) with the hq. if they can't communicate, they are not allowed to perform any of those checks (and i think the internal guidelines say that they must "return to base" or something like that)
Rich
Yes, police will verify through dispatch even if they do not have data service available. Depending on your jurisdiction they probably have different rules as to whether the officer must release the suspect. Where I live, a traffic stop is legally equivalent to an arrest and I wouldn't be surprised if the officer would make an educated decision on bringing the suspect in until at least the officer can contact dispatch.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.