In my (European) country now we can have a digital copy of the driving license on the phone. It specifically says that it’s valid to be presented to law enforcement officers during a check.
I saw amazed in the beginning. They went from limited beta testing to full scale nationwide launch in just two months. Unbelievable. And I even thought “wow this is so convenient I won’t need to take the wallet with me anymore”. I installed the government app and signed up with my government id and I got my digital driving license.
Then yesterday I got stopped by a random roadblock check and police asked me my id card. I was eager to immediately try the new app and show them the digital version, but then because music was playing via Bluetooth and I didn’t want to pause it, i just gave the real one.
They took it and went back to their patrol for a full five minutes while they were doing background checks on me.
That means if I used the digital version, they would had unlimited access to all my digital life. Photos, emails, chats, from decades ago.
What are you are going to do, you expect that they just scan the qr code on the window, but they take the phone from your hand. Are you going to complain raising doubts? Or even say “wait I pin the app with a lock so you can’t see the content?”
“I have nothing to hide” but surely when searching for some keywords something is going to pop-up. Maybe you did some ironic statement and now they want to know more about that.
And this is a godsend for the secret services. They no longer need to buy zero day exploits for infecting their targets, they can just cosplay as a patrol and have the victim hand the unlocked phone, for easy malware installation
Immediately uninstalled the government app, went back to traditional documents.
Pretty sure they’re not supposed to take your phone. The point of a digital document is that you don’t have to hand in anything. Scan the QR code and they can run as many background checks on the data they want. You’ll still have your phone.
Not supposed to != wont. Police regularily do things that they arent supposed to and as long as people naively consent by giving their phone they can get away with whatever they want i would think.
In my country you cant Sue, only complain. But you complain to the instance you complain about. Eg police is handling complaints about the police. Besides that. For most people sueing isnt something you just do
In Brazil, the officer just uses their own phone to scan a validation QR on the ID app, at no point your phone leaves your hand and in a few seconds the officer has what they need. Shouldn’t this be the case in the EU? AFAIK the officers only take your physical ID to check the number, so if you’re using the app they shouldn’t need to confirm that as the info is already validated
Isn’t it impressive that we in Brazil sometimes create the best and most simple solutions to problems, but no one will imitate us and will keep insisting in their problematic systems, because we are the third world and supposedly can’t get anything right? It’s sad when we end up replacing our own good things, because even we think we’re inferior in everything and can’t come up with a good solution for anything.
Say what you will about the country, but gov.br and PIX put everything else to shame and no one even came close to something like that
As op said, the whole point is to get you to hand your phone over unlocked. Thats the point.
But you’re not handing your phone over, it stays in your hand and if there’s a QR code to scan they’ll scan it with the phone in your hand
I believe EU also requires that you give up login credentials if they are biometric in nature. Meaning if you use a fingerprint reader or face unlock you are required to provide that to law enforcement when asked. So either way if they want your phone’s contents they can get it.
They need a warrant or probable cause for that, but yes they can compel it unlike a password. It’s still a search and needs to be lawfully done in the first place.
I wonder if they are referring to this, or to an EU equivalent of it:
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit has ruled that police officers can compel a suspect to unlock their phone using a fingerprint without violating the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination.
They went as far here in Ukraine as making some services exclusive to those who have the app. The official government app for digital documents and services, Diia, also has stupid integrity check, which makes it unable to be installed from Aurora Store, which makes me cut out from such services, because I don’t have Google Services installed. By the way, there are Google trackers in the app.
Yup, if you hand them your unlocked phone they can look through it.
They don’t need to take your phone with them. They literally can just scan the code, because it sends all the info to their screen, that they were gonna look up anyway.
No way the government implemented an app for this use case. That’s extremely inefficient.
I thought you actually tried, that they took your phone?
Illinois at least passed a law to limit the consent given when using a digital ID with a police officer such that they’re ONLY allowed to use it for ID and not snooping, but that’s the only state to do so.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2024/10/should-i-use-my-states-digital-drivers-license
Couldn’t they also use the Android/iOS’ wallet manager which allows handing it over unlocked while the phone is “closed” (not necessarily locked, though…)?
