Hacker News Reader

Comment by alexandros | Hacker News Reader

It's important to keep in mind that the phone holds more than location, call logs, and text messages though. It holds our photos, email, apps, the apps' storage, browsing history, and everything we do on the mobile internet. Putting that off limits is definitely a victory.

View on HN

Or you could just stop using the tools that incriminate you? Voting with your feet works pretty well.

> pling: Or you could just stop using the tools that incriminate you? Voting with your feet works pretty well.

What a stupid thing to say.

Are you seriously suggesting that people "just" opt-out of modern life?

Is that modern life? No it's a prescribed vision by a few corporate entities.

Modern life isn't dependent on a computer in your hand 24 hours a day. Smart phones are pretty much like cigarettes that don't kill you (well unless you walk in front of a bus whilst checking twitter). Living without them is just as easy as living with them and a whole lot cheaper and without the monkey on your back.

It looked like you were calling 'photos' and 'browsing history' things that incriminate you and should be done without. Which is a pretty radical position. If you were just talking about having those on a phone you seem to be missing the point; those things should be off-limits without a warrant, doesn't matter where the personal computer is.

Either way the cost/benefit of a phone is not really on topic.

But I'm curious how a phone is a 'monkey on your back' when you have no obligation to check or respond to anything. And you can get a nice phone with data service for a lower cost than a solid wired internet connection.

Well it all depends on the context which is the issue. The context is defined by what you were doing and what they thought you were doing arbitrarily merged together by the better wrangler of words.

If you are doing something criminal or something borderline which may incriminate you, the best thing to do is not carry the phone which is my point.

However, the monkey on your back is when it becomes an entertainment and communication portal for everything replacing other forms of communication. At that point you rely on it too much. I see this so many times a day it's incredible.

It's not paranoia on my part but more that I create more things, communicate more deeply and enjoy life more now I have a shitty Nokia and less "services" to consume.

Everyone wants a slice of my attention these days. After some deep thought, they're not welcome to it as it's only finite.

If I were a drug dealer, I would take the advice of fictional 1960s mobsters in Goodfellas, and not use the phone.

and more recently Marlowe's crew in The Wire.

A little extreme. However they fail to mention that the police can take your phone and if it is not locked at the time they take it they can disable the locking feature.

Hence, if your truly paranoid about the authorities I suggest giving the ability to remote wipe your phone to someone whom you implicitly trust with instructions do so within whatever criteria you deem necessary.

A small amount of paranoia is good, too much and you need help

If that's the result of the ruling then it was fairly pointless. That's the same as saying that leaving your front door unlocked means the police do not require a warrant to enter and search.

You could leave the door wide open and the police cannot enter under normal circumstances. If accessing a phone requires a warrant then it would seem the same standard applies.

You could also stop using pen and paper, which will be exposed when a warrant is served.

True. I'm sure the very people that the police are most interested in are taking precautions about what the keep on mobile phones, and how they use phones. I recollect an article posted on HN some time ago about drug dealers using cheap non-smart phones and a pill pack of 24(?) pre loaded sim cards used in rotation to keep in contact from a different number each day.

Its the rest of us that have our stuff found...

Or you could just stop having anything to hide, right?

Such laws aren't necessarily designed to give you an out when police are looking for incriminating evidence.

It's also there to prevent a government agency from accessing your personal materials to find something to hold against you in a form of retaliation for some transgression or power play.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com