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Comment by thephyber | Hacker News Reader

As mentioned elsewhere, Apple can't prevent "rubber hose decryption" (where someone compels/coerces/tortures you to get access to an unlocked phone). I suspect this feature wasn't designed to prevent that threat.

My guess is this somehow foils or mitigates the workaround that the Israeli company sold to the FBI after the San Bernadino phone issue.

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They could add a "duress passcode", with an alternate reality of data. I don't expect them to, but it's possible. Bitcoin hardware wallets have this kind of feature to help avoid wrench attacks.

Lying to a federal agent is a crime.

Edit: No seriously. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_false_statements. Refusing to unlock your device is one thing. Claiming that you did unlock it but in fact just used a "duress passcode" is a lie and can land you in jail.

Has the 5th amendment been officially repealed?and the 4th?

The 5th amendment does not protect you from lying. And the 4th has nothing to do with lying either.

And neither necessarily applies at a border crossing

Beating a human is a crime.

This makes me wonder something. I know that while they can't force you to enter your passcode, they can force you to unlock with your fingerprint. I've heard people ask for a feature where you basically have a "duress fingerprint," since fingerprint is already different than password, would using a duress fingerprint be acceptable?

If you're instructed to unlock the phone with your finger, and your "duress fingerprint" unlocks fake data, then you're misrepresenting that fake data as the real data and would presumably be considered to be making a false statement (though this is just speculation on my part).

On the other hand, a "duress fingerprint" that locks out TouchID wouldn't be misrepresenting anything. But it wouldn't surprise me if they could still get you in trouble some other way for knowingly locking out the device after it's been confiscated.

That would be the technical equivalent to the fifth amendment.

The 5th amendment says you can refuse to incriminate yourself. It does not say you can lie.

Refusing to unlock your phone would be equivalent. Unlocking fake data would not.

I believe if you tap the power button 5 times on the iPhone, it disables fingerprint unlock. Perfect for a scenario where you are afraid you might be compelled to fingerprint.

This is apparently an upcoming feature in iOS12 but doesn't work in iOS11 now

What does work is putting the wrong finger on your sensor until it tells you TouchID is disabled and needs your passcode (which is 5 times) or rebooting your device without logging in.

So don't lie about it.

"I just entered my duress pass code, the device is now wiped".

Can they charge you with destruction of evidence when they have no idea if/what evidence was on the phone?

I'm pretty sure they can. And they will probably successfully argue that since you did destroy evidence, you were hiding something.

How do you honestly think that will go down for you or anybody else that tries it, telling a federal officer that you just destroyed the thing they asked you to open?

If you're willing to destroy the data to prevent it being read, why not just wipe the phone before you leave and restore it from an encrypted online backup when you arrive?

Arriving with "empty phone" has also caused refusal of permission to enter in the past.

What Apple could do to is to move the bar from "rubber hose decryption" to "rubber hose account access" by offering a dead simple cloud recovery. Imagine a "Flight mode" where everything on your phone is backed up to apple and your phone is presented with an "enter backup id and password" dialog which allows you to load anyone's cloud backup and is essential a factory reset. Border control might still force you to enter a backup id and password under the assumption that you surely have one, but (to my limited knowledge of the US legal framework) it would not be a felony to load a "duress" backup id (because there is no such thing as a duress backup id, just different data sets).

I believe that they simply dumped the NAND to circumvent the passcode entry limit then brute-forced. But it was also an iPhone 5C model which does not include the Secure Enclave. This method could not be reproduced on any model beyond the 5S.

With the facial recognition tech they might be able to measure duress. Or geofence known customs checkpoints. Would love to reasonably claim that I can't give up my data while I fear for me freedom.

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