Hacker News Reader

The issue with Biometrics, atleast for those in the US, is that they are not protected by the 5th amendment. Court cases have reaffirmed this, meaning you can be forced to provide your Biometrics for law enforcement to gain access to your devices.

Some may feel this is acceptable with the thought if your not guilty then you should have nothing to hide, but this is a fallacy as it tramples over our 4th amendment rights. With passwords locked in your head, you cannot be forced to give that information as that is protected by the 5th amendment. Accessing the device or any information protected by a password must then be done with other means or not admissible as longer delays violates due process.

Android for a while has a feature called "lockdown" where you can force a password entry instead of a fingerprint for the next unlock. Takes a little forethought but it's easy enough to remember when going through customs or being pulled over.

Simply squeezing a modern iPhone pressing both side and volume buttons at the same time has this effect.

Apple devices require non-biometric auth after boot. Turning my phone off in those situations has worked for me.

It's the same with Android.

You’re assuming that law enforcement doesn’t routinely force suspects to give up their PINs and lie and say it was voluntary.

On the other hand, it was reported in the UK (?) that law enforcement follows around suspects, wait for them to unlock their phone in public and tackle them before they re lock it.

It was done to Ulbricht:

> But at 3:15 p.m., the quiet was broken when, out of nowhere, a young woman in street clothes charged toward Ulbricht yelling, "I'm so sick of you!" and grabbed his laptop. Ulbricht leapt from his seat to grab it back, when the half dozen other readers at nearby tables suddenly lunged for him, pushing him up against a window.

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/dead-end-o...

Though the British police are using it as well:

> Undercover surveillance officers trailed Yew and waited for him to unlock his phone to make a call - thereby disabling the encryption. One officer then rushed in to seize the phone from Yew's hand

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38183819

What about this cases is "forcing suspects to give up their PINs and lying to say it was voluntary."? Both of these was swiftly executing an arrest warrant before the suspect had an opportunity to lock or destroy their device.... seems reasonable. Definitely no lying to say they handed it over voluntarily.

You really haven’t heard about the multitude of cases where DA’s and law enforcement were complicit in convicting innocent people? Do you think that a justice system where DA’s actually put a “B” by Black potential jurors to find a reason to keep them off the jury (the case went to the Supreme Court), or the case where an eye witness didn’t say anything about facial tattoos, the police wanted to convict someone, so they used Photoshop to remove tattoos from the person they wanted to convict so they would “fit the description” would be above forcing a suspect to unlock their phone?

If the government will condone torture to get information out of people because of the “War on Terror”, why wouldn’t they do the same for the “War on Drugs”?

No one is forced to give up information, you mean they were convinced and ignorant of their rights. Which was given up voluntarily in any case.

The tactic you mentioned has been used here in the US aswell. Something similar was done to DPR that brought down The Silk Road.

You really don’t think that police brutality is a thing - ie rubber hose decryption?

I think your point is moot. Is torture legal? Is any evidence gained through torture admissable? Are any law enforcement allowed to use torture to gain access to information?

You should be able to answer those yourself. Legal rights are not trumpt by illegal tactics, no matter what information is recovered.

Is torture legal?

No, but it happens all of the time.

Is any evidence gained through torture admissable?

If the police lie and say the person wasn’t tortured or do you believe that police don’t lie?

Are any law enforcement allowed to use torture to gain access to information?

Yes and police never lie and district attorneys never illegally withhold evidence from the defense....

You’re making a lot of assumptions that police, judges, and district attorneys play by the rules and that overworked public defenders have the time or the will to be great advocates for defenders.

> Something you are is the perfect form of authentication

Disagree. A bank manger with a gun held to their head is not a bank manager for the intended purposes.

Should an authentication system be expected to reliably determine the motive of the user in addition to their identity? Various anti-fraud systems address this to varying extents, but a bank manager sitting at their laptop, tying in their password and TOTP with a gun to their head isn’t materially different to them providing biometric authentication with a gun to their head.

Authentication != authorisation.

The bank manager is still authentically the bank manager, gun or not.

Identity != authentication. The bank manager is, from the identification POV, still the bank manager. The bank manager may not be intending to authenticate, though.

I think you're splitting hairs. Authentication simply means to verify someone being who they claims they are. No more, no less.

If we go by your definition login with id and password isn't authentication either. How would we know if the person is "intending to authenticate"!

The bank manager is identified, but the request is not authenticated.

How is this any different of a scenario than having the bank manager memorize a password? They can still force the bank manager to give up the password by threatening to blow their brains out.

> How is this any different of a scenario than having the bank manager memorize a password?

Because in the other scenario the bank manager can be killed and the murderer can still use the "key" (the bank manager's lifeless face). Dead or alive the bank manager is still that same person.

With a password there's more security for the bank manager. If the robber kills the manager then the robber can't get in.

A second password could delay opening the vault (with a pretty animation), alert cops/security, and even lock the front door from the inside. The bank manager is unlikely to have a second face for doing the same.

Biometric auth needs an "under duress" mechanism to be at all comparable.

In general, I'm on board with what you're saying, but there's a thing with security credentials: it's important for me to allow me to give them away to the guy with a knife.

If knife guy comes for me and says "Your phone and password or your life" I can give it to him. It's kind of important that I can or else he'll take my bloody finger with him and body integrity is way more important to me than any amount of my data.

Literally, I prefer my fingers attached and you can clear my bank account rather than the alternative.

The solution here seems to be some credentialing solution that can neither be given away voluntarily nor taken by force. Is such a thing possible?

I disagree, I don't think there is any need for proof of identity to not be voluntarily relinquishable.

I think relinquishable credentials are quite useful for a number of delegation related uses - but if they are relinquishable then they need to be expirable as well.

The guy with a knife won't ask for proof of identity that he knows you can't give up.

If a guy with a knife wants my password I'm going to give it up and walk away alive, then try and recoup the loss of whatever I gave up... maybe I get the debit against an account reversed or purge recent account activity from social media.

There currently is nothing secret like that that I'd give up my life to protect, and I can't conceive of anything of such import existing... for those cases where the item is truly dangerous (like the nuclear football) then a guy with a knife being a threat is already a failure of security.

the guy with the knife is why fingerprints retinal or iris scans, and facial metrics shouldnt be used.

You may not be able to give these things but they can be taken, using that knife.

You don't even have to be alive for those things either.

This is how iPhone works today. Apple bricks your phone if it is stolen, as a disincentive against theft.

Detached fingers don’t work with modern implementations of fingerprint sensors.

Oh, I was unaware of that - so I'm not certain I want to rely on the knowledge of someone in a position to cut off my finger... additionally, they don't currently work, but I'm sure there could be developed ways to spoof them by artificially circulating warmed blood or some such.

Just... biometrics are such a terrible idea - let's not even open that door.

the problem isnt weather or not its true, the problem is how likely someone is to try using a severed part any way, because it just might be FUD and a dead finger is just as good as attached. aside from that, a severed finger continues to live for a while afterward, it doesnt instantly perish. it has to metabolize its oxygen reserves.

The most popular and high priced phone has had fingerprint authentication since 2013. If there was going to be a rash of people cutting off fingers, wouldn’t it have happened by now?

If it happened would any PR department admit it? so far the tactic of waiting for someone to unlock a phone then robbing them has been effective. as soon as it becomes required behaviour it will happen. so far there are methods of hijacking a phone from its original owner, even without the phone in hand [simjacking] and as such tactics are stymied, other more brutal force methods would be required.

You really don’t think that would make the news? Why would you have to depend on the PR department? It sounds like another panic without any basis in reality.

And now, that phones are moving toward face recognition isn’t kind of a moot point?

I'm not convinced that's true.

A quick Google search....

https://www.iphoneincanada.ca/iphone-5s/will-your-severed-fi...

That spokespersons claim is plainly a lie though, refutable both in theory -- the given explanation is gobbledygook -- and in practice -- Chaos Computer Club has YouTube videos showing that fingerprint cloning works.

And that “proof” is of a first generation Touch ID, and unless you can find a reliable citation showing where a dead finger would work, how do you know it’s “gobbledygook”?

From a practical standpoint, if someone was willing to cut off your finger, wouldn’t it be easier to just force you a gunpoint to unlock your phone? Someone who really wanted what’s on your phone bad enough to try the “unreliable” hack, would just force you to unlock your phone or give up the password.

>If you had a guard sitting at a door ... you could not fool them.

What??? Of course you could. That's why no building that cares about security actually relies on a human guard for authorization.