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Iowa Wants To Let You Carry Your Driver's License On Your Phone
An anonymous reader writes: The Iowa Department of Motor Vehicles is busily developing software that will allow users to store the information from their driver's license on their smartphone. It would also add features like a simple barcode to scan for information transfer, and two-factor authentication to access it. "At first thought, the idea seems rife with potential security and privacy issues. It is well known at this point that nothing is unhackable; and if a project is made on a government contracting schedule, the likelihood of a breach is only greater. ... Questions of security, however, must take into account context – and there, it can be argued that our current regimes of physical documents have been an enormous failure. Having every state choose their own approach for issuing IDs has led to patchwork regulations and glaring weak points in the system that criminals have repeatedly taken advantage of. Driver's licenses today are regularly forged, stolen, and compromised – it’s far from a secure situation."
Handing you phone to a cop grants them implicit rights to search the phone. Therefore, having your license on the phone is a backdoor way to grant them access to search your device.
It's a trap. If your driving licence is on your phone and you get pulled over, you have to hand over your phone. The cop takes it back to the car, data rapes it and hands it back. Later at the station they can analyse the contents offline, adding your contacts to the database of known associations and your selfies to their facial recognition database.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
.. I can't show you my license because my battery died..
This space for rent, inquire within.
... it can be argued that our current regimes of physical documents have been an enormous failure.
Unless, by enormous failure, you mean, has been working for hundreds of years, then citation please. No one's stolen my driver's license or any other physical documents - ever - and they're pretty simple to use - no batteries or cell signal required. In addition, I don't have a smartphone.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
This is as good a place as any for me to jump on my favorite hobby horse: the US government should be issuing a standardized national ID; there should be a federal administration that handles identity of US persons.
Specifically, the government should issue 2-factor authenticators to all citizens which do absolutely nothing but verify identity to businesses, people, and other government agencies. The service should return no name, address, or other identifying data: just a hash ID code which is unique for every person, and unique for every agency or business which requests your ID. Thus, a bank can verify that you're the same person who set up your bank account, the state police can verify that you're the same person who applied for a driver's license, but that's all they can learn about you. This would makes it very difficult for anyone but the federal government to steal your identity, and tough for anyone but the feds to correlate your credit card data with your medical data with your Facebook profile.
Obviously, this means the federal government would be able to use your identity records to track you. But they can do that anyway, with a quick call to a credit card company and your internet service provider. This at least keeps everyone *else* from being able to do so.
On the plus side, if your battery goes flat, all you have to do is commit a crime and wait for the police to recharge your phone so they can access your ID card.
It'll probably involve a minimal contactless reader and token-transfer like Apple Pay.
I assure you it will not. That is not how police play that game. Furthermore that requires your phone to be on and then the officer can search the phone because you just gave him access and probable cause. If they want to come up with a system whereby the officer has no physical way to search the phone (not just legal protections) then I might think this is a good idea. As the law stands right now there is no way in hell I would do this.
Some idiot judge apparently recently ruled that while you don't have to give your password you do have to give your fingerprint. How that doesn't violate the 5th amendment involves some mental gymnastics that I'm not really capable of.
Don't need to transfer all phone data. (really? you think cops are going to sit around to transfer 16-128GB? lol)
Don't know why you are laughing. It's not funny at all. Yes I absolutely think cops are going to sit around and transfer the entire contents. You'd be a fool to presume otherwise. He gets paid to be there no matter how long it takes.
but he's not compelling you to hand over for a data search, nor is he compelling you to unlock it. You've voluntarily not only unlocked the phone for him, you've handed it him. Now he has your data in unlocked condition and because you've already been pulled over for whatever moving violation, cause to search through the data just as if he were asking to see inside your glovebox to make sure you're not carrying anything illegal - actually, even easier than that for him.
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
So the government wants you to accept an application built by them, including giving it permissions to operate on your phone. You don't even need to hand your unlocked phone to a cop to have them looking around in your personal business. The app can do that all by itself any time it wants. Thanks but no thanks.
Did you read the linked article in my post above? The Supreme Court has already held that police need a warrant to search the phone of someone they arrest. I don't see why you think that handing an officer your phone for one reason - viewing the on-screen ID, would appear to translate into "I grant you permission to close the ID app and browse/download my email and photos."
That's terribly naive. The SCOTUS has ruled that the public can video record police officers, yet the police will still stop you from doing it.
The ruling only has teeth if the cops search your phone and then try to use it directly as evidence. There is nothing stopping them from using the information for parallel construction or just keeping the private photos that you took of your girlfriend/wife.
there should be no requirement to drive on said roads other than proof of citizenship
Our society, democratic/republican/whatever, has decided through legal means (enacting and enforcing laws) to place restrictions on the use of public roads. Driver licensing is such an example.
Drivers licenses are unconsitutional
No, you made that up.
no way to opt out if you choose to not use the roads
Not true.
Well, the minute you stole the money from my pocket to build the roads, it became my right to use them.
Again, no.
There's lots of things tax dollars provide that you can't just use any way you want. Society has decided that citizens cannot access restricted government areas that are built with tax dollars. You don't have a right to fly a NASA rocket. You don't have a right to take a soldier's gun and shoot people. You don't have a right to rape a government official.
You do have a right to learn about how society and government work. I encourage doing so, lest you might continue to appear as an idiot.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
No, he wouldn't. SCOTUS held that even if ARRESTED, police still need a warrant to search your phone. The law is pretty clear.
best to assume ALL cops are dirty cops. start from there and go downward and you'll be close to reality.
look, they have this thing called a 'blue line' (google it). that makes them all dirty, by collusion. any one who does NOT report bad behavior (think: serpico) is a bad cop. and so, probably 99% of the cops out there are bad, by definition.
thugs with guns. I would trust the mafia (truly, honestly) before I'd trust an american cop.
sad to say this. I don't enjoy feeling this way. but I'm realistic.
don't talk to cops, don't socialize with them, avoid them at all costs. they CAN kill you and they will make up any story they want to save their own asses.
bad scene. hope it gets fixed but I don't have any such false hopes.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Yup, I will *not* be handing my phone to a cop. Period.
Me neither. But this is still a useful feature. Now I can just leave my license permanently in my car, and use the phone for routine ID checks, like buying beer, or when using a credit card for a big purchase.
The case has been litigated and SCOTUS held the police need a warrant to conduct a search.
And of course the police always do what they are told... [/sarcasm]
Letting the police look at what is displayed on your phone screen is not a voluntary consent to a search of the phone.
And yet I assure you it will be interpreted as such.
As for the cost of fighting them, if it's litigated again it will be as a civil rights violation under 42 U.S. Code section 1983 which includes a fee shifting provision.
Which only matters if you have enough money in the first place to see the litigation through and happen to win which is by no means guaranteed.
I've been pulled over multiple times for harassment by cops, when I've broken no laws. That's why I've been pulled over at least twice as much as I've gotten tickets. If they have a real reason to pull you over, they write you a ticket because that produces revenue and maintains their job. Sometimes they just want to stop you in your tracks and sniff up your ass because they can.
It's sad, because we arguably need cops. That's why we need to crack down on police abuse. Respect for the law is at an all-time low.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
They need a warrant to search your phone WITHOUT CONSENT. When you unlocked it and handed it to the cop specifically to look at, you just consented.
Correction, his ANPR/ALPR misread your plate and you came up with some kind of flag.