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Comment by anonuser123456 | Hacker News Reader

I played around with it. Not worth while at this point. Too many privacy risks (e.g. requires you hand over your phone to police unlocked).

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This is the thing I think most people aren’t thinking about. I promise you the police either have or are cooking up a way as we speak to image the entire contents of your phone when you hand it to them. Until we get some laws in place around this stuff, no way.

Not from the US, so help me understand here, why would a traffic cop looking to verify a license want to image the entire contents of your phone?

We live in a police state. We have the highest incarceration rate of any country. Many of the people in prison are political prisoners. Our national security apparatus is powerful and unaccountable. Congress just reauthorized 702 which allows warrantless surveillance. Police and security apparatus is constantly looking for more ways to watch and incriminate anybody who resists their power.

Some fraction of people are authoritarian by nature. Most cops have no interest. But the fraction that do, will use any tool they can to find a crime.

Given the amount of deference courts give to cops, that they are allowed to lie without consequence, you don’t need/want to give them any more tools.

People are needlessly paranoid because there will be a few incidents that get a lot of media attention and mindshare, despite being a vast minority of the time.

They don't, but I'm sure there are some who are salivating at the thought of using traffic stops to simplify collecting evidence.

This is exactly the scenario that Apple’s proposed ID solution addresses. Not sure why California chose to go at it alone.

I remember reading that California intends to support Apple and Google’s wallet systems. My guess is that they are working on the backend first and this gives them the opportunity to exercise that system faster. Apple wallet itself likely requires more in depth security infrastructure and will take more time (speculation on my part).

You can use guided access to restrict access outside of the app. Here in Colorado, they just scan the barcode on the back and pull up the info on their own device.

Only maybe 1/10 people even know about guided access. It’s also time consuming to setup.

Apple could add an API to wrap apps in guided access automatically … or lock the device on app exit. But that’s not going to happen because they want wallet apps to go though their Apple Wallet APIs

You could, but in practice essentially no one will do this.

"in practice" everyone has faceid/touchid enabled, which means you can be compelled to unlock your phone, making this point moot to begin with.

> (e.g. requires you hand over your phone to police unlocked).

If you’re worried about this keep your id card?

If I need my physical ID for everything, why do I want a digital ID on my phone?

Sounds like you don’t.

Backup and convenience potentially.

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