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Ask Slashdot: Would You Use A Cellphone With A Kill Code?
Slashdot reader gordo3000 writes:
Given all the recent headlines about border patrol getting up close and personal with phones, I've been wondering why phone manufacturers don't offer a second emergency pin that you can enter that wipes all private information on the phone? In theory, it should be pretty easy to just input a different pin (or unlock pattern) that opens up a factory reset screen on the phone and in the background begins deleting all personal information.
I'd expect that same code could also lock out the USB port until it is finished deleting the data, to help prevent many of the tools they now have to copy out everything on your phone. This nicely prevents you from having to back up and wipe your phone before every trip but leaves you with a safety measure if you get harassed at the border.
It could be built into the operating system, added by the manufacturer, or perhaps sideloaded as a custom mod -- but that begs the question of whether it'd really be a popular feature. So leave your own thoughts in the comments. Would you use a cellphone with a kill code?
I'd expect that same code could also lock out the USB port until it is finished deleting the data, to help prevent many of the tools they now have to copy out everything on your phone. This nicely prevents you from having to back up and wipe your phone before every trip but leaves you with a safety measure if you get harassed at the border.
It could be built into the operating system, added by the manufacturer, or perhaps sideloaded as a custom mod -- but that begs the question of whether it'd really be a popular feature. So leave your own thoughts in the comments. Would you use a cellphone with a kill code?
It would be *very* easy to have smartphones with adequate security from all sorts of perspectives. Secure key storage, secure storage, secure communications, secure boot, secure containers, secure remote management, secure (multiple factor) authentication, secure arbitration of what hardware can access what memory etc. The thing is: if your target audience is largely 15 year old girls, then you probably have commercial priorities elsewhere.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
I'll just avoid travelling to the US.
Why not have a second PIN that opens a sanitized, but seemingly fully normal, home page? Missing a few critical apps, or having versions signed into a different account.
Because if the device is confiscated, a simple dump of the memory will reveal everything.
Well, you wipe your phone when trying to enter - it means that you have something to hide and should be detained and not allowed in.
...Now, you'd be facing destruction of evidence of obstruction of justice charges but, that is probably better than what you would have been facing had the phone been unlocked.
Fucking seriously?
Unless you're engaged in some seriously illegal activity that you rather enjoy conducting on your smartphone, perhaps you should *really* sit and think about those charges before making such a statement. Gut feeling is a criminal record will impact you a hell of a lot more than your Facebook data being confiscated.
H1B is a scam to take over American jobs. It is used to recruit incompetent phony PhDs by NASA, who then travel abroad and leak confidential information all over the terrorist countries. So, fuck you.
1. Duress codes are a dumb idea that sounds cool. Why ? By definition you almost never use them . Now try remembering that code you set up 3 years ago and never used since while arrested , and are freaking the fuck out in a stress situation. Doesn't happen in the real world.
Home alarm systems don't have them any more for a reason.
2. On iPhone if you use TouchID, it's 4 taps to "erase all contents and settings". Any duress code would be longer to enter than that.
If you give me a phone unlocked by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in it which will hang him.
- Cardinal Richelieu
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I thought you were being detained and your phone searched without due process, because you're in one of those legal "grey zones" not technically in the US. If you can't be protected by the laws there, why would you be subject to charges?
Customs and boarder crossing is becoming more and more the a little mini US GITMO.
Awk! Pieces of eight. Pieces of eight. Pieces of seven... ERROR: General Protection Fault. [Paroty Error.]
Why not use thumb for regular login, middle finger for wipe, seems apropo
When seconds count, the police are only minutes away.