Slashdot Mirror
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?
Yes.
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.
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.
People will accidentally wipe the phones.
There would be 10 legitimate use and 10,000,000 acciddental customers with lost data and liability claims.
I, as a phone / OS provider, would fight this feature.
I, as a phone user, would fight this feature.
Imagine a prankster or a drunk friend or a child getting your phone and trying this out.
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.
The most unsuspicious way would be to have the smartphone selfdestroy itself by shorting the battery or by executing code that overheats the CPU when the appropriate PIN code is entered. This is the reason why I always buy Samsung smartphones: nobody would blame me if "accidentally" it catches fire
Index finger fingerprint = open phone. Middle finger fingerprint = delete or randomize encryption key. Maybe require a second fingerprint (middle finger on other hand) just to be sure.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Availability of this feature would result in new regulations which make it illegal to nuke your phone when asked to hand it over to a border agent/law enforcement officer. Add something like 1 year in prison etc and the functionality is practically useless.
But don't memorize it, before crossing the border, and send it to yourself securely on another device not in your possession. That way you can swear that you don't know it and cannot obtain it. It becomes something you neither know or have. State that this is your standard travel policy for safety reasons.
You are in a foreign country.
Upload your data to a foreign server.
I recommend a one-time key for encryption.
Erase it from your phone.
Enter the U.S.A.
Retrieve the data. Erase it from server.
End of problem.
Avoids border hassles.
All perfectly legal.
18 USC 1503 : Federal Obstruction of Justice.
10 years in a Federal pound-you-in-the-ass prison.
Your new cellmate is named "Bubba".
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
Remember folks in the USA, you COULD then be charged with tampering with evidence or DESTROYING evidence if you use a kill code. A very slippery slope. Rather, you enter a code in that locks, the phone down, and the next time someone enters any other code than your rescind code, the phone wipes, that way YOU are not the one that wiped it, with L.E. did. However, I am sure they WILL still charge you with something as they will be P!ssed off!
In the United States if a border agent asks for your cellphone and you wipe it right there, you've just broken the law. You can now be charged with an obstruction of justice charge. Now if you wipe your phone on the flight or before you're interacting with the border agent, then you've done nothing. But once they ask for it, any actions you do to delete the information on that device is illegal.
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.]
Wouldn't it be better to start holding our governments accountable to us, the people who elected the leaders of said governments, and the people who ultimately pay all their salaries? Yeah, I know, corporations own the governments, you can't fight city hall, etc. But really, fuck this nonsense of either taking inconvenient, expensive, extraordinary, and unreliable countermeasures to protect ourselves from our own elected and paid for governments, or taking it up the a** from same! It's time to start organizing and fighting for change, the way civil rights activists did decades ago. Our civil rights are being violated, and it's time to politely but firmly say "No!" to sitting at the back of our own goddamned bus!
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
If you're worried about the border patrol, it seems pretty easy to know when you're approaching a border. You can just wipe the phone in advance using the built in feature to wipe the phone and return it to the factory settings.
The whole thing gets more complicated if we're assuming the police just start confiscating phones of random people without a warrant, but I'd imagine that would face a stronger 4th amendment challenge. And really, at that point, I don't think a kill switch would be good enough. I'd want manufacturers to rethink the whole security design, probably limiting the information stored on the phone in the first place.
Because I'd lose my Candy Crush high score.
Have gnu, will travel.
Conveniently, this particular biosignature becomes inactive for 36-48 hours after an "enhanced" search.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.