In light of recent ICE/DHS shenanigans in the US

  • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
    1·
    3 months ago

    Most people lock their phones with biometrics which can be legally compelled from you.

    If you use a password you can refuse to provide it.

    If you’re living in a world where the police are willing to literally drug and torture you then your digital security requirements are beyond the scope of what you can get from social media and you should assume that everything you do is publicly known.

    • techclothes@lemmy.world
      1·
      3 months ago

      I use biometrics for apps and such, but not my phone. Having worked apple support, the number of people who only used their fingerprint and their phone was restarted for whatever reason leading them to have to know their password, which they forgot… is numerous.

    • bob_lemon@feddit.org
      0·
      3 months ago

      Both iPhone and Android have ways to disable biometrics until the next unlock via password/code.

      Iirc, on iPhone, it was pushing the power button 5 (or 7?) times. On Android, long press the power button and select “lock”.

      • alkbch@lemmy.mlEnglish
        01·
        3 months ago

        Press the power button and one of the volume buttons for 3 seconds.

    • bobbyfiend@lemmy.mlOP
      0·
      3 months ago

      They have access to it if they threaten/indimidate/blackmail you into giving them access. Dummy phones are a real thing; saw a post today on masto by a company… person (?) who said they keep a stash of clean burner phones for when employees travel through US borders. These are all reasonable, and maybe even CalyxOS’s decoy partition (does it still have that?). The larger problem is that few people will use these things, not even bringing a clean phone. And once they start threatening your family and your long-term safety and freedom, it’s highly likely you’ll give them access, if they know there is any access to be had. Which they increasingly do, because universal surveillance blah blah.

        • theneverfox@pawb.socialEnglish
          0·
          3 months ago

          The NSA doesn’t generally give access to agencies on the ground like that - at most they flag individuals in the interdepartmental system, they don’t hand over what they have easily

          But, if you have physical access to a device, there’s always a way in. Border control or a police department can buy tools to do it or hire contractors

            • theneverfox@pawb.socialEnglish
              0·
              3 months ago

              Rather than locked down, they’re basically a black box - I think they have their own firmware and hook into the OS and hardware in weird ways (part of the reason why Linux phones are so difficult to make work)

              If the NSA wants to ping your phone location or even turn on the microphone, they can, supposedly even when the phone is “off”. If they want to side channel load in a rootkit, they probably can

              But NSA surveillance comes in two main flavors - broad and focused. If they think you’re a terrorist or of strategic interest, there’s a lot they can do… But that means actual humans are interested in you, personally.

              But for everyone else, they’re not going to sift through ten million phone storages - that’s way too much data to be useful, and they already have long collected way more than they could make use of. The broad stuff is about flagging people - the most effective is to look at networks of people. If you have connections to a terrorist, you’re a potential part of the network, and so you’ll be flagged as more interesting. I’ve heard rumors that certain keywords might be flagged on calls too, who knows. Too many flags and they might devote some man hours to looking into you personally

              But generally, they’re very protective of their tech. They don’t use the good stuff widely, because it’s not useful, and it increases the chance for discovery and countermeasures. My understanding is they won’t share their surveillance systems either - they might put notes or flags on shared LEO systems or tip someone off, but they really, really, like to play it close to the vest. Even with other 3 letter agencies

              So yes, this possibility exists - especially with llms to help filter through this information ocean - but there’s no shot they’re sharing capabilities with border control agents