I’m sorry if this is a stupid question, but what is the best way to refuse to do this?
Say you’re in xyz situation and a cop demands your phone. You say no. They get angry, maybe make some threats (whether true or not), etc.
What is the best way to say no, you aren’t comfortable, come back with a warrant, without pissing them off royally in such a way that things end up worse for you?
in such a way that things end up worse for you?
IANAL. This is what they want you to think, “just do this and it’ll be better for you”. It might be a short term hassle waiting for the drug dog, or being arrested while they conduct their investigation. But long term it’s the court that matters. And the court will throw out anything obtained illegally or the cops do illegally.
Cops are not there to help you, they just want to find someone to pin a crime on. The only one that will help you is your lawyer. Stfu. Don’t talk to the police.
This. You have rights, but the police will lie, cheat, and steal their way into getting whatever they want, especially when what they want is for you to waive your rights.
When stopped by the police (in America), you say “I invoke my fifth amendment right to not answer questions and I don’t consent to any searches and seizures. Am I being detained or am I free to go?” That question starts a clock for what is a reasonable amount of time to detain you for their investigation because you’ve made it clear that you’d like to leave as soon as you’re legally allowed to.
As for any kind of force, just stay silent and unthreatening. They’re gonna do what they’re gonna do, and anything you do can be used as rationalization for escalation, which they really seem to fucking love. Be polite when you do choose to speak. Obey lawful commands and let them arrest you if that’s what they’re gonna do. You don’t fight armed thugs in the street, you fight them in court. File complaints and sue when they violate your rights and cause undue harm. Swinging at them or shouting in their face is how you get shot. Let their ego win the moment and then administratively destroy their career and life later on.
I’m also not a lawyer, but this is what any half decent lawyer would tell you to do. Just shut the fuck up (but invoke your right to shut the fuck up or your silence can actually be used against you) and be as passive as possible so your lawyer has a slam dunk case getting your charges dropped and/or suing the everloving fuck out of them, hopefully nullifying their qualified immunity in the process. Nothing you do or say to the police can help you, but it sure as shit will be used against you. Even things you think are innocuous can corroborate that you’re who they’re looking for, so just shut the fuck up.
I hate advice like this because you just say empty terms like “obey lawful commands” after saying to not do anything. The question is how do we do this practically. Cops can lie. They can just say whatever is a lawful command. This is why this sort of advice needs to be more specific.
A good example, presenting your driver’s license for traffic stops. That’s usually a law, is it not? But you say to not consent to searches or seizures. The whole reason people ask for specific practical advice is because they don’t wanna get fucked over by the cops but also don’t wanna get fucked over for unintentionally pulling sovereign citizen like bullshit.
Important addition: don’t just shut the fuck up.
First, in some jurisdictions, failure to identify is an arrestable offense. Full name, date of birth, relevant cards/papers.
Second, if you need to reach for something, say something so they don’t think you’re about to pull a weapon on them. Officer safety is always a concern in the land of handing out guns like candy.
Third, explicitly state that you are exercising your fifth amendment rights. Otherwise you might run into an “I want a lawyer, dawg” situation.
in some jurisdictions, failure to identify is an arrestable offense
There’s nowhere in the US that is true without reasonable, articulable suspicion (Terry v Ohio)
explicitly state that you are exercising your fifth amendment rights.
You really don’t need to do that unless you’ve already started answering questions, but it is good practice.
It might be a short term hassle waiting for the drug dog
FYI thats illegal (US vs. Rodriguez)
being arrested while they conduct their investigation
Detained*
They can’t detain you in the US for the purpose of conducting an investigation
what is the best way to refuse to do this?
try to be as white as possible.
They definitely slam white people’s heads into the ground for telling them no, too.
Just the act of refusing makes the act of seizing your phone legal or not. If you legally give them your phone by your own will, they are able to use all evidence they find in the courts. If you deny to give them your phone, and they seize it anyways and access it you have a valid path to throw the evidence they discover out as an illegal search and seizure of your property. I’m not a lawyer but that is the general thought process on denying them access to your property.
Edit: Just want to say this mostly pretains to United States law and similar legal structures. This advice is not applicable everywhere and you should research your countries rights and legal protections.
“what’s a phone?”
“I don’t know why my fingerprint isn’t working” (biometrics are disabled)
“I don’t remember my passcode” (it’s a pattern input field)
“The guy at the phone place changed it for me”
“It’s never really worked right.”
“There’s no Google on it tho.” (What does this even mean?)
“Who do you need to call anyway?”
“Can’t you just use your own phone?”
Just act like the dumbest creature on earth.
input the wrong password like 5 times to lock up the phone then say its muscle memory and you don’t remember the password numbers
My wife, a person who passes for pale white, refused to allow a police officer to investigate her car after a speeding ticket. I wasn’t here. Her car apparently "matched a description " but they had nothing. She told me they spend another 15 minutes having her sit on the shoulder, then let her off.
I drove with my family through the south. Had two kids in the car. I’m also brown. No reason to be pulled over, but I did have plates from Ohio since it was a rental. Shitty cop said there’s a lot of folks “in his parts” that smuggle drugs using rentals and kods and demanded I open the trunk. I kept saying I’m trying to visit my family, I got kids in the car. 20 minutes with a crying kid, In frustration, I relented, showed him the empty trunk.
Depends on local laws, but if the cops ability to seize your property without warrant isn’t protected by local laws:
Ask if they have a warrant and if they don’t then take your phone oout and power it down, then put it back in your pocket and tell them they can direct complaints to your lawyer because you’re not handing over any devices.
If they seize it without a warrant then you can sue the department, although if they have reasonable suspicion then you won’t have much luck.
In the states, they’ll just accuse the phone of committing a crime and take it anyways
Disable biometrics
Android: look up “lockdown mode”
iOS: hold volume down + power, or press power 5 times fast.
Better: restart the phone. This puts it into the safest state it has, as it has not yet been initially unlocked and will require a non-bio auth. Stronger security, may/should hold if they attempt to attack/hack/compromise it, if it comes to that. Takes like 3 seconds. Do it, not the equal-time-worse-security version of just disabling bio.
Additionally, running GrapheneOS you can set up a duress pin to wipe the phone profiles if things were to escalate.
Being smart, set up the main profile a bit to look real, but have no actual information. That way it’s not obvious tha its been wiped.
Being cheeky, set the duress pin to be something simple like your birthday. So if you are detained/arrested and they try to get into your phone they are the ones to wipe it for you.
I imagine something like “I do not consent to a search nor seizure of any of my property. May I reach into my pocket so I may place my phone in plain view? If my property is going to be seized even against my will, I still want to ensure everyone’s safety.”
Then repeat the no consent line as you place your phone on your dashboard or whatever.
I imagine this means your lawyer will have body cam footage of the double nonconsent and the judge will see you were willing to comply even with potentially unlawful orders so the justice system could sort it out in court instead of someone trying to fight it out on the street.
Do you have a warrant? Then sorry officer I will not hand it over per my fifth amendment right.
From there just say you’re not saying anything else without a lawyer and then just keep demanding a lawyer.
Yes. The cop will get pissed off. But better him mad then you spending years trying to get out of a bogus charge because of some bullshit they found on your phone. Better to be annoying and demand to speak to a lawyer.
If you absolutely have to hand over your phone, turn it off completely, like hold the power button and then tap the off icon. That will dump any keys out of RAM, which is why it always requires the full password to unlock when you turn it back on. Both in terms of how your phone works and the leaks we’ve seen, the cracking tools the police have are overall significantly less likely to be successful when used on a phone that’s been turned off and not unlocked since.
Also, IIRC iphones have a feature where they will dump at least some of the system keys from RAM if you push the lock button five times. I’d still trust fully off more but that’s easier to do covertly.
Five times wanted to set off an emergency service call and sound the alarm 🚨 YMMV (Pixel 7)
Additionally, with the Pixel 9 holding down the power button no longer turns it off, you have to press power and volume up at the same time to get to the power menu.
UK
Edit, source: https://www.saunders.co.uk/news/prosecuted-for-your-password/
A lot countries have this now.
Even for a number of countries where it’s not technically enshrined in law, police can still effectively do it anyway, by detaining you for as long as they like until you comply.
Sounds like it’s time for the deniably encrypted phone.
Mark my words.
For many of us, this is a “No shit Sherlock” moment.
But in 10 years, we will have young people going “Uh what really?”
Remember when we used to say, “Don’t put your name on the internet?” And now it’s everywhere?
That was like the biggest thing i learned in computer class, that i already knew in 2002 or so. Later myspace became a thing, and everyone had a myspace name. Then facebook and some people used their real name. Then facebook asked you for your phone number, and i thought: well, that’s silly, who in their right mind would do that. Turns out the answer is everyone.
They even give them all phone numbers from all of their contacts linked to real name (even those who don’t have whatsapp)
What a database…
They exactly know who knows who and how connected people are. Nearly everywhere in Europe. Don’t know about US, I think there is more iMessage?
Yeah I remember the early days of the internet when no one used their real name and we had relationships with dozens of people who we had no idea where they lived and what their real names were.
It seems quaint, but I kinda liked it like that.
Remember when we used to say, “Don’t put your name on the internet?” And now it’s everywhere?
Mine isn’t, go ahead and look it up. You won’t find my name anywhere in the internet.
Here it is encrypted so only you can read it: >!John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt!<
I don’t see what the difference would be in 10 years.
I don’t think 90% of people, especially “young people” would avoid doing this already. It’s already a major awareness/compliance issue, and not at all a “no shit sherlock” moment.
But what did you have in mind that will be different in 10 years? Paricularly for young people.
The more comments and news I read about the US the more Orwellian it feels.
You guys really need a massive left-shift away from the omnipresent government which regulates bodies more than companies.
The whole Western world is at this point, it’s so depressing. Even when the left seems to win democratically people like Macron nakedly abuse their authority and choose to caucus with the fascists over the social democrats.
At some point, someone is going to figure out George Orwell was actually a time traveler, and he tried to fix things with books. He had to deliver the message that way because if he just shouted in the streets the things that were going to happen, he’d been written off as a madman. Change a few details here and there… and then sell it as “fiction”…
Frankly, George Orwell is part of the problem. Aside from a brief stint during the Spanish Civil War where he supported the CNT-FAI, he spent the overwhelming majority of his life supporting the British Empire and relentlessly hating Communists (and other socialists and members of minority groups) of all stripes, to the point where even the British government told him to chill the fuck out because they were allied with the Soviets. His books aren’t immensely popular in extremely right wing countries because they have a left wing critique of government overreach, they’re popular because they are anti-government in exactly the same vague and malleable way that all populist right wingers are.
Yes. We must know where they live so we can shit on their country to make ourselves feel better.
'Merica!
IDK I just had a overwhelming sense they were in the UK, which is like… way worse.
To add to this, don’t use bio-metrics to lock your devices. Cops will “accidentally” use these to unlock devices when they are forcibly seized.
Or just know how to enable lockdown mode. On iOS that’s 5 rapid clicks of the power button, screen on or off, and it vibrates to let you know you got it without looking. Dunno what it might be for android, or if it varies by model.
It ends up like a newly rebooted phone; requires a typed passcode. It also provides quick links to medical ID info and the sos emergency call thing. It may, if you have an ID set up, also have a link to that, but I don’t have that configured so not super sure.
I personally rather trust that my device isn’t able to be unlocked without my permission, rather than hope I am able to do some action to disable it in certain situations. The availability of such features is nice, but I would assume I would be incapable of performing such actions in the moment.
My other thought is, how guilty is one perceived if they immediately attempt to lock their phones in such a matter, by a jury of their peers? I rather go the deniability route of I didn’t want to share my passcode vs I locked my phone down cause the cops were grabbing me.
For most phones, just rebooting it will drop it back to bio + passcode. That’s the quick method for me.
Yes, Apple is bad. They are a tax-dodging multi-trillion-dollar company. They are not good. They are not your friend.
Android phones have this feature as well btw lol
