Bill allows authorities to scan your phone after a crash

[Castdeath97]

 

This New York bill suggests that after a crash the person would be subject to a scan with a 

device called a textalyzer.

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A new state Senate bill would let police submit you to a "textalyzer" (basically, a device that scans for recent phone activity) after an accident -- you'd actually lose your license if you refused.

 

This device would only scan for activity and can't see the actual content of the messages

 

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Privacy, as you might guess, is a concern. The Cellebrite-made technology involved in the law can't access the actual contents of your phone -- it can only tell whether or not you've been busy. Cops would still need a warrant to see if there really was an on-the-road conversation, in other words.

 

However some are still concerned it can mistake other background processes for text and maybe this could be a step that leads to detailed phone searches

 

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How accurate is the technology, for example? Will it mistake background phone activity (such as notifications or uploads) for active use? What happens if you dispute the allegations -- will you have to consent to a detailed phone search? As good as the measure might be, it could lead to wrongful convictions if the technology is either imperfect or misused.

I can already image how badly abused this would get if somebody was to figure out how to make it read actual phone contents.

 

Source Engadget: http://www.engadget.com/2016/04/12/new-york-textalyzer-bill/?sr_source=Facebook

[KuJoe]

Good, people who text/talk and drive are just as stupid and selfish as people who drink and drive.

 

EDIT: If you're concerned about false alerts then you can easily unlock your phone and show the officer or if privacy is a concern you can get a copy of your calls/texts from your wireless provider (not the contents, just the time stamps) and bring it to court with you showing whether there was any activity leading up to the crash.

[ivan134]

How'd you get a picture of my crash? Are you following me?

[Lethal Seraph]

But officer, you can see on my phone that I've been running away from my stalker!

[Naeaes]

This sounds stupid to me but how exactly is the traffic law structured in the US? I mean, would they let you off scott free if you weren't texting but did cause the accident? What exactly does it matter if you texted or not after an accident has already happened?

[KuJoe]

20 minutes ago, Naeaes said:

This sounds stupid to me but how exactly is the traffic law structured in the US? I mean, would they let you off scott free if you weren't texting but did cause the accident? What exactly does it matter if you texted or not after an accident has already happened?

You can be charged with other violations if they can prove you were texting/calling while driving in addition to the violations you are charged for the crash itself. It can also change who is at fault so the right person can be charged.

[Yog]

26 minutes ago, Naeaes said:

This sounds stupid to me but how exactly is the traffic law structured in the US? I mean, would they let you off scott free if you weren't texting but did cause the accident? What exactly does it matter if you texted or not after an accident has already happened?

It's a "moving violation" (basically against the law...but you go to traffic court instead of a criminal one) to text and drive in a lot of states. However, if you hit and kill someone while texting and driving you could be charged with a more serious crime than otherwise (criminal court in this case). I don't know how it is in finland but the laws in the US are fairly convoluted, being amended and re-amended time after time and never completely redone so the law turns into layers upon layers of circumstances that basically only lawyers and politicians (often times politicians were originally lawyers) can understand.

[Naeaes]

3 minutes ago, KuJoe said:

You can be charged with other violations if they can prove you were texting/calling while driving in addition to the violations you are charged for the crash itself. It can also change who is at fault so the right person can be charged.

That kind of makes sense. It just seems to me that I could drive as wildly and erratically as I wanted and crash anyone I felt like just as long as I never texted while driving. There'd always be the chance that they happened to be texting and the fault would fall on them.  But my main issue is that anyone could just claim they were using a hands-free and speech-to-text to dictate a message or just to make a call. And if they really aren't allowed to dig into the phone any deeper than just to tell that it was being used, how would they ever disprove it. 

[KuJoe]

1 minute ago, Naeaes said:

That kind of makes sense. It just seems to me that I could drive as wildly and erratically as I wanted and crash anyone I felt like just as long as I never texted while driving. There'd always be the chance that they happened to be texting and the fault would fall on them.  But my main issue is that anyone could just claim they were using a hands-free and speech-to-text to dictate a message or just to make a call. And if they really aren't allowed to dig into the phone any deeper than just to tell that it was being used, how would they ever disprove it. 

Driving while texting/calling using hands free does not improve your driving abilities according to studies (and even Mythbusters if you want to see some funny tests on the subject).

 

http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/videos/hands-free-vs-handheld-minimyth/

[Sors]

So you just need an android auto enable stereo, and they can't say you were holding the phone.  I guess even a hands-free Bluetooth could work.

[Naeaes]

1 minute ago, Yog said:

It's a "moving violation" (basically against the law...but you go to traffic court instead of a criminal one) to text and drive in a lot of states. However, if you hit and kill someone while texting and driving you could be charged with a more serious crime than otherwise (criminal court in this case). I don't know how it is in finland but the laws in the US are fairly convoluted, being amended and re-amended time after time and never completely redone so the law turns into layers upon layers of circumstances that basically only lawyers and politicians (often times politicians were originally lawyers) can understand.

I guess it's much like that in Finland too. Laws are amended every once in a while but it's done in a more straight-forward way. They remove paragraphs and put new ones in place and then in the footnotes of the law, there's a list of what's new and when it was amended and the entire "version history" is available online.

We have a mandatory traffic insurance that pays for the damages to the other vehicle and to all persons in your car or theirs. Not having that insurance is just as much a violation as not having a license. So it's pretty safe to assume that regardless of who causes an accident, your ass is covered and if it wasn't you yourself, your car's gonna be fine too. Obviously it's possible to add to the insurance to get coverage for your own car too. There's a bonus system that makes not causing accidents really worth it. I probably couldn't afford a car if I had to pay the full price. I have 70% off myself which is the maximum for my insurance company. 

In addition to those payments, there's punishments for legal violations. Like if driving over the limit caused the accident. Texting and driving isn't legal here either and so on. But AFAIK texting is considered negligence like any other. It's definitely not better to read a newspaper or turn around to talk to people on the back seat and so on. And if your texting causes a crash that only involves yourself, you're simply on your own according to the thing with the insurance.

[icey]

Good, fuck those who text and drive.

[Naeaes]

18 minutes ago, KuJoe said:

Driving while texting/calling using hands free does not improve your driving abilities according to studies (and even Mythbusters if you want to see some funny tests on the subject).

 

http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/mythbusters/videos/hands-free-vs-handheld-minimyth/

Yeah. I know. It's crazy how counterintuitive laws can be. I don't know about anything other than Finland but here having a hands-free makes the whole thing go away. It's technically legal to operate spotify on your car stereo but not on your phone. Go ahead, read a book while you drive so long as it's an actual book and not Google Books.  

[LAwLz]

3 hours ago, KuJoe said:

EDIT: If you're concerned about false alerts then you can easily unlock your phone and show the officer or if privacy is a concern you can get a copy of your calls/texts from your wireless provider (not the contents, just the time stamps) and bring it to court with you showing whether there was any activity leading up to the crash.

Picture this scenario:

1) You get an SMS.

2) You are in an accident.

3) The police wants to search your phone to look for SMS activity.

4) They see that you received a text message. All of a sudden they got evidence that you were texting and driving, even though you might not have.

 

Showing them this will only strengthen the idea that you were texting and driving, even if you were not. Besides, why should it be my responsibility to prove that I am innocent when the police does not have sufficient evidence? The system is based on "innocent until proven guilty", not "guilty if you are suspected, and don't prove that you are innocent".

 

 

I hate people who text and drive as much as the next person, but this system seems dangerously flawed.

[KuJoe]

46 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Picture this scenario:

1) You get an SMS.

2) You are in an accident.

3) The police wants to search your phone to look for SMS activity.

4) They see that you received a text message. All of a sudden they got evidence that you were texting and driving, even though you might not have.

 

Showing them this will only strengthen the idea that you were texting and driving, even if you were not. Besides, why should it be my responsibility to prove that I am innocent when the police does not have sufficient evidence? The system is based on "innocent until proven guilty", not "guilty if you are suspected, and don't prove that you are innocent".

 

 

I hate people who text and drive as much as the next person, but this system seems dangerously flawed.

Having an unread or read text message on your phone is not against the law though. The point is if they can prove you were texting/talking on the phone while driving then that's enough to charge you with it. If you received a text, there's no way to tell if you read it before, during, or after the crash unless phones record when a text is read. The thing that does prove you were texting while driving is if there were outgoing text messages before the time of the accident or if their was an ongoing call at that time also (easy to determine without needing to know what number you were calling or the contents of the text message. There are a lot of ways around this but running a basic scan to pull text/call data is enough to get a warrant for your phone records from your carrier to verify outgoing texts and answered calls during that time (I doubt they would go through this trouble unless you took it to court or there was death or injury that occurred). If a death is involved it also makes civil court a lot better for the victims.

[Trik'Stari]

How long before it puts spyware on your phone?

 

How long before android users come up with a measure to prevent this device from working?

 

How long before congress hears about said measure, and passes bill locking down cell phone operating systems cuz "won't somebody think of the children!"?

[Real_PhillBert]

As long as it can tell the difference between read and unread activity, I have no issues with this.

[dragosudeki]

This would not really work. Aren't there cars that actually implement systems that allow you to link up your phone and read those information to you? How would this determine if it was the person who looked at the phone, or the bluetooth that accessed it instead?

 

Self driving cars would completely solve this problem. If they want to know why a crash/problem happened, just take a look at the recorded data and decisions made by the car.

[KuJoe]

50 minutes ago, dragosudeki said:

This would not really work. Aren't there cars that actually implement systems that allow you to link up your phone and read those information to you? How would this determine if it was the person who looked at the phone, or the bluetooth that accessed it instead?

 

Self driving cars would completely solve this problem. If they want to know why a crash/problem happened, just take a look at the recorded data and decisions made by the car.

Because using hands free methods (such as bluetooth) is just as dangerous as holding the phone to your head or texting with your hands. Self driving cars will solve a lot of problems (accidents definitely being one of them) and hopefully reduce the cost of insurance to a minimum or even a flat rate for everybody based on coverage.

[dragosudeki]

23 minutes ago, KuJoe said:

Because using hands free methods (such as bluetooth) is just as dangerous as holding the phone to your head or texting with your hands. ...

If hands free methods are treated the same as holding/using the phone directly, then are you also implying that they should also implement systems to check whether you were listening to music or talking while driving (since that is the equivalent of listening to your car's sounds and responding to it)?

[KuJoe]

9 minutes ago, dragosudeki said:

If hands free methods are treated the same as holding/using the phone directly, then are you also implying that they should also implement systems to check whether you were listening to music or talking while driving (since that is the equivalent of listening to your car's sounds and responding to it)?

Neither of those are against the law... yet.

[multifrag]

Correlation is not causation. It's good and bad that they will be looking into the phones themselves. If they really wanted to know the activity. Phone company can provide that. There was an incident in Australia where texting woman killed a cyclist and the police recovered her phone use activity from the phone company. She had 50 text in the span of 30 minutes and 3 calls. The bad part is if police wants to access your phone this will be an easy way to do it. Not sure if the law states if one or both parties get their phones taken, but if both it will an easy way to check on people they're interested

[Vivilacqua1]

I can see how this could be inaccurate. Say right after a crash, you call or text your family to say that you're alright and will be home a bit late. Then the cops come and see activity thinking you were texting and driving. It just doesn't work, because that's what I would do, and same I would guess with most people.

[dragosudeki]

51 minutes ago, KuJoe said:

Neither of those are against the law... yet.

I know. I'm just stating that this 'tool' will not be able to actually reliably prove if you were breaking the law or not. 

[samcool55]

There is a decent chance this causes false positives so that means it's an inaccurate way to get information and it shouldn't be used.

 

Take linus for example, he gets probably every couple of seconds a notification. A tweet, an e-mail, an instagram post, i don't know.

This gives the system so many reasons that you might think he was texting  or doing something else on his phone while driving, while it's possible that's not the case at all.

 

It's a bad thing that we shouldn't use.