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Comment by kccqzy | Hacker News Reader

Pressing both side buttons has nothing to do with driving.

The feature described does not give personal information. It would give information which is highly relevant during an official investigation in a privacy-preserving manner which does not open the possibility of giving other unintended information.

Now, it would be possible to use the same mechanism they use for digital drivers licenses to further restrict it but the nice thing about that idea is that not using sensitive information means there isn’t much concern of a leak.

The feature described divulges information such as "timestamps showing when it was unlocked, for how long, how many finger taps occurred, etc" which is absolutely personal information. And no, it is not privacy-preserving. It is an affront to all cryptographers to use the phrase "privacy-preserving" here given that it makes zero effort to preserve privacy.

Have you actually seen what amazing technologies are worthy of the name "privacy-preserving" these days? You can look up items in a database without the database operator knowing what you queried. You can let a server add two numbers without the server operator knowing what these two numbers are. These are worthy of the phrase "privacy-preserving" in this age.

That’s not a privacy risk under any normal definition of the term.

That was described as a way for a police officer to investigate your phone use after a traffic stop or in an accident investigation.

Then what safeguards does it have to ensure there is in fact a police officer and a traffic stop or an accident? None? Then it's a privacy nightmare that divulges your personal information to any stranger nearby.

I’m not advocating for it (and, in fact, think it’s a terrible idea). I was just explaining what the idea was.

Thanks. The idea was perfectly understood.

Ok. This post made me doubt that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39146401

Reply on news.ycombinator.com