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.
On iOS you can enable Guided Access and restrict what one can do, for example disable touch and lock it to an app, until you enter a Code. I imagine Android will have something similar.
This obviously doesn’t protect against electronic forensics, but it does protect against just opening different apps and searching through the phone manually.
Yes, Android has app pinning. But they still have access to anything the app gives them.
They can see my ID on the phone. But if they want to take it, then no, I don’t have that ID on me. But then, I live in the US where digital ID isn’t valid.
It is valid in some states. OP raises an excellent point. I live in the U.S. and have the digital ID on my phone, but I won’t be handling it to law enforcement. I’ll make sure I have the physical copy when I’m driving.
You can block off certain sections of the screen, or disable touch completely. If all the info they need is on the screen just make it so they can’t tap anything.