Never give the cops your phone.
Cops gonna cop. I’m to the point where you could tell me a cop was found torturing babies to death with hot irons and I wouldn’t doubt it was true. Truly horrible people.
And yet that cop would still have numerous supporters pouring out of the woodwork claiming that “the babies should have complied.”
Man, we live in a world which probably has immediate and ready access to nude images of any particular sort one might desire – and we’re getting to the point that computers can synthesize stuff that doesn’t even exist – and you’re committing crimes and risking your job to get a low-quality cell phone picture of a cell phone screen of an amateur nude photo?
EDIT: And randomly checking the first guy, he’s apparently married with four kids:
Trooper David L. McKnight, of Sikeston, Missouri, has been assigned to Zone 7, which serves the citizens of Mississippi, New Madrid and Scott counties. Trooper McKnight is a graduate of Scott County Central High School in Sikeston, Missouri. Prior to joining the Patrol, he worked as a patrol officer for the Sikeston Department of Public Safety. He is married to Natalie (Cooper) McKnight and has four children.
Probably not going to do wonders for your marriage, either.
as always, its about power
Never give cops your phone, yes. Also, don’t use biometrics to lock your phone. Police can legally force you to unlock with your thumb print, they legally (and like, physically) cannot force you to reveal a passcode stored only in your brain.
Oh forcing physically works very well with a gun to your head, but yeah not legal ofc.
Also any phone that has been out of your vision in the hands of police, border agencies or TSA is electronic waste.
Just to be clear, they can’t legally search your phone at all without either consent or a warrant. There is absolutely no reason you need to hand your phone to a cop during a traffic stop, no matter how it is secured.
Obligatory reminder that (for iPhone at least) hitting the right side button rapidly 5 times locks out biometrics and forces pin entry
That dials 911 on Android. That was a fun feature to discover on my new phone. I’m sitting there, trying to turn up the volume for a podcast and it’s not working. Pull my phone out of my pocket and see that it’s on a countdown before it dials out! The countdown was on 3! No, no, no, no, no, no, no! Cancel! Hang up! What the fuck!? Why is that a thing!?
That shit got disabled real quick.
For Android, a reboot forces a pin code.
There’s also ‘lockdown mode’ which forces a pin and hides most info from the lockscreen.
Long-press power, then select ‘lockdown’. (you may have to enable this feature in settings)
And to get the reboot option on Pixels, long press Power and Volume Up. Infinitely more annoying than just long pressing the power button.
What? Do you mean to get the pop up on screen? That’s still a simple long press on the power button. I just did it now on my Pixel.
Long power + Vol Up does a hard reboot directly without calling the power menu
Default after Pixel 5 is to bring up Google Assistant with a long press of the power button.
Then they must have changed their minds again, I haven’t changed this setting so it’s default has been long press for power button
But I did find the setting so you can change it and not worry about it anymore: Settings > System > Gestures > Press and Hold power button
But it also takes like 10-15 seconds of holding it. Not something you can do when a cop holds out his hand for your phone.
For a hard reboot yea. It’s faster to do the onscreen menu which pops up in like a second
Or you can root and restore such powers to Tasker
This is the case on iOS as well but restarting takes longer and more explicit interactions than pressing a button five times
Thats handy AF. Thanks.
What about the pattern lock?
That’s just a passcode for practical purposes
Patterns have less possible combinations than pins, and is easier to shoulder snoop than a pin. Edit: and also leaves more visible smudges from oils in your finger.
Also in older android versions (it might be changed by now) they used to store it in plain text.
Alpha-numeric passwords are the strongest, but is very inconveinient to most people so PIN is the second strongest and a good compromise between security and convienience.
Like people have commonly said, avoid using biometrics.
In addition:
If you dont clean your phone screen, the leftover oil residues left by your finger could reveal the passcode. So wipe (as in physically wipe) your phone screen every time after you enter your passcode.
If you suspect cameras to be around, try to obstruct the view from any potential cameras recoding you as you type your passcode.
Not to mention there are some exploits like Cellebrite has figured out. So even with those precautions, your data still might not be safe.
In short, I’d recommend that you dont rely on your phone’s local encryption to protect your data.
Instead, encrypt with an open source program and upload the encrypted content to a cloud service that is hosted in a jurisdiction with good privacy protection laws (or alternatively, if you don’t like the cloud, keep it in a hard drive / SSD hidden in a safe location). And then delete the data from your phone. Cant force you to reveal you data if they don’t know what data exists.
Also on iPhone, tap power 5 times will bring up the emergency call, BUT will disable biometric login and force the passcode.
But don’t assume this also works for android. I tested it on a Samsung phone and triggering the emergency call and expecting biometrics to be disabled, but I found out it does not disable biometrics, but you need to change a setting that enables a separate button to show up known as “Lockdown mode”. You then bring up the power menu and tap the “Lockdown mode” button to disable biometrics.
Or you can force a reboot, press volume down + power button for approximately 10 seconds.
For android phones that aren’t Samsung, it should be just holding the power button for 10 seconds.
Basically the standard operating procedure whenever you see law enforcement walking towards you, is that you should reach into pockets and press and hold the button combo to force a reboot. You don’t even need to take it out of your pocket and its less noticible than taking the phone out of your pocket.
Oooh Missouri cops in the national news, this is sure to be good news.
