In my (European) country now we can have a digital copy of the driving license on the phone. It specifically says that it’s valid to be presented to law enforcement officers during a check.
I saw amazed in the beginning. They went from limited beta testing to full scale nationwide launch in just two months. Unbelievable. And I even thought “wow this is so convenient I won’t need to take the wallet with me anymore”. I installed the government app and signed up with my government id and I got my digital driving license.
Then yesterday I got stopped by a random roadblock check and police asked me my id card. I was eager to immediately try the new app and show them the digital version, but then because music was playing via Bluetooth and I didn’t want to pause it, i just gave the real one.
They took it and went back to their patrol for a full five minutes while they were doing background checks on me.
That means if I used the digital version, they would had unlimited access to all my digital life. Photos, emails, chats, from decades ago.
What are you are going to do, you expect that they just scan the qr code on the window, but they take the phone from your hand. Are you going to complain raising doubts? Or even say “wait I pin the app with a lock so you can’t see the content?”
“I have nothing to hide” but surely when searching for some keywords something is going to pop-up. Maybe you did some ironic statement and now they want to know more about that.
And this is a godsend for the secret services. They no longer need to buy zero day exploits for infecting their targets, they can just cosplay as a patrol and have the victim hand the unlocked phone, for easy malware installation
Immediately uninstalled the government app, went back to traditional documents.
Pretty sure they’re not supposed to take your phone. The point of a digital document is that you don’t have to hand in anything. Scan the QR code and they can run as many background checks on the data they want. You’ll still have your phone.
Not supposed to != wont. Police regularily do things that they arent supposed to and as long as people naively consent by giving their phone they can get away with whatever they want i would think.
Then sue them. You have the right.
In my country you cant Sue, only complain. But you complain to the instance you complain about. Eg police is handling complaints about the police. Besides that. For most people sueing isnt something you just do
Of course you can. You said you live in Europe.
Unless you live in Russia or the Vatican, that means your country has signed the European Convention on Human Rights, of which article 8 commits it to respecting your privacy.
So, sure, you’re not going to bother suing. It’s not that important to you. But let’s go easy on the helplessness of “In my country you can’t do that”. Yes. You can do it.
Wonder why you are getting downvoted as this is a perfectly legitimate point. Are they just not in Europe or something?
Or who knows, they really could be in the Vativan, stranger things have happened. But I don’t know why they would mention those circumstances without qualification that they are special circumstances. Kind of burying the lede there.
Good luck lmao
They went as far here in Ukraine as making some services exclusive to those who have the app. The official government app for digital documents and services, Diia, also has stupid integrity check, which makes it unable to be installed from Aurora Store, which makes me cut out from such services, because I don’t have Google Services installed. By the way, there are Google trackers in the app.
They don’t need to take your phone with them. They literally can just scan the code, because it sends all the info to their screen, that they were gonna look up anyway.
No way the government implemented an app for this use case. That’s extremely inefficient.
I thought you actually tried, that they took your phone?
Illinois at least passed a law to limit the consent given when using a digital ID with a police officer such that they’re ONLY allowed to use it for ID and not snooping, but that’s the only state to do so.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/10/should-i-use-my-states-digital-drivers-license
But do you trust them to follow the law? I certainly don’t.
Couldn’t these apps also use the Android/iOS’ wallet manager which allows handing it over unlocked while the phone is “closed” (not necessarily locked, though…)?
I don’t know if they could, because they will probably compromise all information into the wallet.
But it’s a good idea. I hope that it can be implemented like you said in a secure way.
Hi, Your dedicated local Secret Service agent here.
We don’t need your smartphone to access your data. We have surveillance equipment for that. That is why we can scan the qr code of your ID app and do the checks we need.
If you want us not to track you, you need a degoogled smartphone and use cash exclusively. Also you could use a vpn while you browse the interwebs, but we ll still be, eventually, able to see where you browse.
BTW we don’t stop randomly ppl on roadblocks. You or your car or your route or all of the above was of concern for us.
They aren’t from the USA
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Actually you do have them in the us too now. It’s just only in nine states so far.
You guys have IDs? I thought that was only for drivers licenses… And no, those two are not from equal categories.
Ummm, yes, we do.
You’re absolutely right about the danger of giving up your phone, if the police wanted to take it from you. By sticking with traditional documents you remove any pretense they might have to try. It is not a stupid call, it’s just less convenient - but then, security is always a compromise with accessibility.
Why is nobody mentioning that by installing it and authenticating, there is sweet fuck all you can do to stop them tracking your movements and downloading your whole address book so they can see who you Associate with?
Taking the phone isn’t the problem if they are already in it.
In most phones it is possible to set permissions (to contacts, locaton, etc) for every app.
Honestly, I wouldn’t worry about all the comments discussed here. Mainly because the governments already have access to everything and I mean EVERYTHING. They will get a subpoena in under a minute if they want to check something regarding your digital life. Not condoning it, just a fact of present life.
Mainly because the governments already have access to everything and I mean EVERYTHING.
There’s limits, largely around the speed and accuracy by which data can be ingested and processed. You can look for everyone somewhere sometimes and someone everywhere sometimes and someone somewhere at any time, but it takes a ton of digital resources to monitor everyone everywhere all the time. For the data to be meaningful it has to be interpreted.
Manned checkpoints allow local state actors to make decisions in near-real time relative to immediately present information. The classic example is someone with a stale warrant or notice on their record. The sheer volume of delinquents makes pursuing every individual troublesome, but as soon as a known offender steps across a checkpoint the police can pounce on the individual offender in that instance. If you’ve got a five year old traffic ticket, a police officer can be in your face about it as soon as they run your ID.
If you are on android you can use screen pinning. That way phone won’t get locked and bother the police but they can’t switch to any other app without your password.
But I don’t know how much I’ll trust an app by government. Maybe in Europe that app is Open source.
For some reason that’s only a thing when navigation is set to buttons, when using gestures it’s not available. So yeah it’s a bit hard to go to settings, change the navigation mode, turn on pinning, pin the app and only then hand over the phone…
I also have my phone setup to gesture navigation. If I swipe up and click on app icon I see option to pin it.
Must be some OnePlus limitation or something.
I just double checked on my phone, on Android you can pin the current app, that limits access for the user to only that app. Unpinning requires you to essentially unlock the phone again. I wouldn’t hand my phone to a pig either, but if I pinned the app, it would be secure enough for a traffic stop.
For people with iPhone you can do this too.
Go to settings and pull down with your finger to get the search box to appear, then search for “Guided” and click “Guided access”.
Enable this setting as well as toggling “Accessibility shortcut”. Now you can open an app and triple click the lock button and select guided access.
Then on this screen you can press start in the top right or options in the bottom left to refine the controls, for instance:
- Side button
- Volume controls
- Motion
- Software keyboards
- Touch
- Time limits
Now the phone is locked in that app and to come out of it requires the passcode.
Thanks man. This is really useful whenever i need to show someone anything on my iphone.
No problem.
Yeah it’s great for giving your friends your phone if you don’t trust them not to try and fuck with you for jokes. Or if using it for playing music in a group gathering.
Even for children using the device. Particularly as you can set the volume and not give them the permission to change it.
Nah, I’ll just carry my ID card around.
As others already stated there are solutions already to pin apps and to be honest, I feel I would not give the phone to a policeman like that.
On the other hand, what I’m more concerned about is giving the access to my phone’s data through different permissions to my government.
For example this is the list of permissions for the Hungarian government app: https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/hu.gov.dap.app/latest/#trackers
that’s odd. in south africa while we don’t have a digital license the physical ones do have a code. they scan the code and that’s it. they never take the license unless they asking for a bribe.
- Do not have a mobile device
- Do not install anything proprietary or governmental on that device you don’t have
- Use borderline secure (GrapheneOS) OS on that device you don’t have and don’t unlock it if demanded unless your health and/or life is in danger
To add to this, a lot of what keeps us safe is the friction of bureaucracy. Authoritarians cannot micromanage every decision you make or round up every person they want because those actions take time and resources that aren’t infinite. But you can reduce the time and resources required if you make identification more convenient and therefore enforcement more targeted. Maybe now they can justify making you present ID every time you pay cash at Starbucks, buy a backpack, get on a bus, use a bike share, watch hot snuff porn, you name it.
Every country in Europe that has vastly better privacy laws than the US, also already has national ID since forever.
Now they even became electronic biometric IDs, and I still don’t need to show it whenever I buy a loaf of bread.
Even if, why would anyone ever want to bother when they could just track your payment cards?
Pit it on another phone that you keep in your car or another profile with nothing else on it
A phone that still has your GPS tracking data stored in it?
…no
I mean you’re carrying it around, right?
Turn GPS or just keep the phone off until you need it. Dont put a sim card in it.
Or… Keep the card in the car?
That means if I used the digital version, they would had unlimited access to all my digital life. Photos, emails, chats, from decades ago.
Bare minimum, it would take a substantial amount of time and resources to harvest data from every phone of every driver passing through a particular checkpoint. Not that I’d ever recommend handing over my phone to a cop, but this kind of data transfer isn’t trivial. And its not clear what a street cop is going to do with 10 GB of accumulated vacation photos.
On the flip side, if you have an Automatic Backup feature on your phone, its going to a cloud computer somewhere. And that cloud computer is almost certainly compromised by the state digital security agency (and probably a number of foreign security agencies). At that point, it doesn’t matter if you’ve got a physical id or a digital one, just knowing who you are is enough to tie you back to that digital archive.
But… again, what is it that front-line state agents are planning to do with all this data? That’s never been made particularly clear.
it’s more like searching messages for some keywords, then use the result to justify a full car search
