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Comment by kube-system | Hacker News Reader

Sounds like a creative way for law enforcement to get people to hand them their unlocked devices during a search.

The app itself recommends only showing the officer your screen, and not handing your phone over. As for Android, you can also pin the app before handing it over, if you so wish to. Pinning is a feature whereby the foreground app is the only app that can be interacted with until the next time you unlock the phone. All notifications are also hidden.

From the article "Avoid handling a customer’s phone. If you have difficulty viewing or scanning, ask the customer to adjust the phone to make checking easier. "

I don’t think that suggestion is going to prevent anyone from doing otherwise if they find it advantageous.

So I unlock the phone and hold it in front of an officer? At which point the office relieves me of my phone and takes it as evidence.

There's an opportunity for mobile OSs to support this usecase with a "guest" account: lock the phone to a single app so you can hand it to a less trusted person. Also useful for toddlers gaming.

The last Android version had a weak guest mode; the current one does not seem to.

iOS has had "Guided Access" since almost forever.

Not quite a guest account, but you can use the Accessibility shortcut (from the Control Center or triple-clicking the sleep button) to quickly prevent app switching before handing a device to someone.

You can even use it to disable interaction with parts of the screen by drawing regions, or disable the hardware buttons, and set an autosleep timer.

What operating systems really need though, is a "fake OS" mode. It should display an alternative launchpad with some random apps with random photos, notes, messages etc. When someone tries to do something it should stall with poor network connectivity dialogs or other fake issues.

Maybe someone can make an app like that? :)

Yeah, a "duress" mode. Maybe activated if you unlock with a different finger or PIN.

The book Little Brother by Cory Doctorow mentions an innocuous home screen or desktop that is accessed via alternate password and I've always wanted to see it actually implemented.

There's various tweaks that enable this if you're jailbroken.

Wouldn't that just shift the burden of trust upon the jailbroken apps?

Just put it in the emergency medical information section that can already be accessed when the phone is locked.

(On an iPhone, anyway. I haven't tried To set this up on my Android.)

Let's not turn this phone robbery into a stolen identity thing.

There's an opportunity for Apple to integrate it with Wallet, as they did for the Japanese public transport tickets. You can bring up cards from wallet without unlocking your iPhone.

If you can, enable Screen Pinning in Android. I use it all the time for airlines that give me the option to use an app to present my boarding pass... to the TSA.

You can just hold your phone up to the QR code scanner yourself. You don't need to hand them your phone.

This is true. Do you want to argue otherwise with the TSA?

I mean you should argue, but I'd also consider if I want to miss my flight because of additional screening.

I wonder if it works with Apple Wallet or similar? Those cards can be accessed without unlocking the phone fully.

A good way to make people run proprietary software they control.

I wouldn't give NSW police that much credit.

They may not have planned it, but I'd give them enough credit that this kind of abuse is almost a certainty.

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