Hacker News Reader

Comment by analog31 | Hacker News Reader

A potential argument for making the Breathalyzer mandatory is that the alcohol dissipates over time, and has to be detected while it's still present. Also, the Breathalyzer measures nothing but alcohol.

There's no such immediacy with phone activity, especially since phone logs are stored permanently somewhere other than the phone. If the police need to search the driver's phone records, they can tell it to a judge and get a search warrant. So the analogy to the Breathalyzer just isn't a good one.

And, a casual search of phone records could turn up all sorts of stuff, encouraging use of the Textalyzer as a pretext for conducting a broader search.

View on HN

The concept of a Textalyzer also ignores the capacity for apps themselves to be the cause of the activity. For example IFTTT could be sending texts as a result of some trigger. The messaging app could be retrying to send a message that was sent previously. You might have auto-email set up. The entire concept is flawed. That your phone has engaged in some kind of activity is not indicative that the human who owns the phone did so manually.

It's a technically ignorant news article about technically ignorant politicians creating technically ignorant laws that don't really help.

Not to mention passengers. My wife commonly uses my phone in the car to help me navigate so I can keep my eyes on the road. A tool like this would actively punish responsible drivers like myself.

Textalyzer isn't the judge, jury, and executioner here. You're not going to have your phone scanned and then be immediately carted off to prison for the rest of your life because an app sent an auto text.

All of the data it pulls from your phone is going to _evidence_ that could be used in court.

I'm still not on board with it, but I don't think false positives are as big of a deal as people here are making them out to be.

> they can tell it to a judge and get a search warrant

This is clearly an attempt to ignore Riley v. California. As Justice Roberts said at the end of the unanimous opinion[1]:

    Our answer to the question of what police must do before
    searching a cell phone seized incident to an arrest is
    accordingly simple—get a warrant.

[1] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/573/13-132/opini...

the Breathalyzer measures nothing but alcohol

If you read some of the history of the devices and their use, I'd argue the correct statement is "the Breathalyzer does not measure anything". The number of inaccuracies and outright bugs in both the hardware and software are appalling, considering the increasingly-draconian penalties associated with their use.

Thanks. I'm certainly open to that possibility too.

> Also, the Breathalyzer measures nothing but alcohol.

One would hope but no one in the industry has had their products extensively evaluated for false positives by independent researchers. The way these machines work is entirely handwavy and full of assumptions that aren't necessarily true. How you can confidently extrapolate blood alcohol from breath alcohol under loosely controlled test conditions with 4 significant digits across the spectrum of human physiology has never been explained.

I would be doubly afraid of false positives from a textalyzer triggered by some app that accesses texts automatically. There will be no recourse to prove the state wrong.

The issue some people have (those at the other end of accidents) is that unless the accident involves major traumatic injuries it costs too much money and time (for the investigators) to get the records from the phone companies and to make sure they synchronize event times, etc.

So, this, presumably, would make that aspect cheaper and afford this evidence for less severe accidents and allow those who believe they should pay less in insurance because they drive more responsibly (as could evidenced by this method) to enjoy those benefits and at the same time presumably drive down the incidence of distracted driving induced accidents.

That's understood, but I think the expenditure of money and time are not just to get records, but also to ensure the oversight that protects our rights. For instance a search warrant issued to the phone company could be limited to time-stamp data, thus preventing the police from conducting a broader search without cause. Also, the warrant creates a record of what was searched. I believe that the public interest in oversight of the police could be reasonably balanced against the cost of that oversight.

If it's actually desirable that the fact of an accident be treated as probable cause for such a search, then the warrant would not be all that hard to obtain. In general, warrantless searches need to be justified by some kind of immediate need, not just cost and convenience.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com