6 ms·

Texting and Driving? Watch Out for the Textalyzer

39 points by state 10y ago

emitstop 10y ago
Terrible and flawed on so many levels I can't believe it
HappyTypist 10y ago
This won't work. iOS has disk and file encryption, and you cannot access this kind of data without being unlocking. Forcing someone to provide a PIN has been ruled against the first amendment.
- npizzolato 10y ago
  Couldn't the same be said for a breathalyzer? Forcing someone to breathe into a machine could be seen as forced "speech" in the same way giving up a password is. That seems to be allowed since the only penalty for refusing is losing your license (as opposed to some kind of criminal charge). Honest question btw.
  - koolba 10y ago
    Most states have laws on the books that require you to agree to a sobriety check as a precondition of getting a driver's license. I think that also includes agreeing to a blood-draw if you get booked for DWI. Refusing is grounds for revocation of your license. Now all that aside, this is quite a stretch ... If the 5th amendment protects you from disclosing a password under a court order, there's no reason you should have to unlock your phone just because a police officer asks you too. Come to think of it, pretty sure that applies that unlocking your trunk either unless the officer has a warrant.
  - magicalist 10y ago
    > Couldn't the same be said for a breathalyzer? Yes, actually, and that question (wrt criminal penalties some states have heaped on) happens to be in front of the Supreme Court right now in Birchfield v. North Dakota[1] (though not for the first amendment, GP is off course there). Sibling comments are correct on the legal theory behind allowing punishments for refusing to take a breathalyzer test, but it's clearly questionable whether a state should be allowed to issue criminal penalties for availing yourself of your rights. If such a thing were generally allowed, warrants wouldn't be necessary in most cases: let us search your person/phone/car/house/papers without a warrant unless you want severe automatic penalties, etc. [1] http://www.scotusblog.com/2016/04/argument-analysis-criminal-penalties-for-refusal-to-take-a-breathalyzer-test-in-jeopardy/ http://www.scotusblog.com/2016/04/argument-analysis-criminal...
    - ams6110 10y ago
      If we would simply hold people liable for the consequences of their actions we would not need DUI laws or breathalyzer "implied consent" attached to driving.
      - smileysteve 10y ago
        Seriously. Distracted and reckless driving have been laws long before cell phones or laws against drinking while driving. Distracted and reckless driving already carry large fines and are much more subjective with much less burden of proof than finding a text message on a phone.
        pdkl95 10y ago
        Drunk driving laws are really addressing the problem indirectly. The whole point is that EtOH affects stuff like reaction time, motor control, situational awareness, and risk assessment. The source doesn't matter, if you are not able to meet a minimum ability in those skills, then driving is a going to be dangerous. The source of the problem doesn't matter. Instead of the breathalyzer (or other tests for EtOH) we should be testing for ability. I suspect this shouldn't be hard or expensive, for example, to make a portable device that implemented objective tests[1] of ability. Obviously some research would be needed to determine which skills need to be tested and to calibrate the minimum-ability cutoffs. [1] like this reaction time test: https://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/java/redgreen.html https://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/java/redgreen.html
    - 0xcde4c3db 10y ago
      > unless you want severe automatic penalties Isn't that basically how traffic tickets work in general? As far as I understand it, you have the option of rejecting the ticket as long as you're willing to be arrested for the offense instead.
      - ams6110 10y ago
        Not really. The ticket is just documentation of the officer's charge that you violated whatever law. You can sign it or not, tear it up, you'll still be on the docket at the local courthouse at some date in the near future, and if you don't show up you'll get a bench warrant for failure to appear.
  - filiwickers 10y ago
    It's called "implied consent". You have to agree to submit to a breathalyzer when driving in order to get your license. All states use this type of law for breathalyzer among other things.
    - npizzolato 10y ago
      My point being, if you can be made to agree to submit to a breathalyzer when driving before you get a license, why can't you be made to agree to submit to this text-analyzer when driving before you get a license? I'm not saying this would be a good thing, but they seem very similar to me.
      - koenigdavidmj 10y ago
        Implied consent still generally (up to your state) requires reasonable suspicion. It would likely be unconstitutional to have an implied consent law to search your trunk (or your phone). The breathalyzer has the immediacy requirement described elsewhere in this thread, which doesn't apply to your phone. The only reason to avoid getting a warrant is convenience.
- tater_sent_me 10y ago
  Somehow constitutional protections don't apply to things they arbitrarily deem to be privileges. Try and refuse a Breathalyzer and see what happens.
- jlubawy 10y ago
  Did you mean the fifth amendment?
- revelation 10y ago
  This is missing the point. You can also refuse a breathalyzer, but will then naturally have your license suspended. Driving is not a right in any sense, it's a privilege.
- filiwickers 10y ago
  This is not against the first/fifth amendment because you will have already consented to it. Similar to a Breathalyzer you will have "implied consent" when you get a license. Either you consent to this and get your license or you don't consent and you lose it/cannot get it. Driving is not a right, you need to follow the rules and consent to certain things in order to do it.
  - SamReidHughes 10y ago
    The thing is, driving is actually a human right.
    - taneq 10y ago
      I don't think you need a state-granted license to exercise a human right.
      - SamReidHughes 10y ago
        You need one to practice medicine.
        justinlardinois 10y ago
        Is practicing medicine a human right?
        taneq 10y ago
        You could maybe argue that the actual practice of medicine is a human right, but offering medical advice to others as a paid service is certainly not.
        SamReidHughes 10y ago
        Pursuing the career of your choice, for the purpose of making profit, is also a human right.
- mc32 10y ago
  It's not that hard. Since the study claims up to 70% of accidents can be attributed to distraction and phones being a major chunk insurance companies can offer willing participants 30% discount vs people who opt out.... Watch people opt in for the discount.
lost_my_pwd 10y ago
Hmmm... I have asked other's in the car to read and respond to text when I am driving. I can also read and respond (canned text) to texts in my car using voice or steering wheel controls. Seems like this is either very misguided/flawed, simply a feel-good measure, a way to funnel public money to a connected company, or some combination of the three.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
stordoff 10y ago
Setting aside the obvious technical and privacy concerns for a second, how do they intend to handle cases where more than one person is in the car? If I'm driving with my mother, I'll fairly often read a text to her and she will dictate a response. If you didn't see that interaction, it seems indistinguishable from if she was texting whilst driving.
- justinlardinois 10y ago
  That's that the courts are for.
pwendelboe 10y ago
Well this seems like a horrible privacy invasion. I can't imagine that they won't also look at the contents when they are analyzing the device. It would have to be baked into the phone and as such could probably be bypassed anyway. We really need more technologically competent representatives...
blazespin 10y ago
invest in self driving cars
- yakult 10y ago
  You mean the ones made by google, connected to the cloud 24/7, dumps its logs remotely on demand, and will lock its doors and drive you to the police station if its bayesian analysis thinks you're probably a terrorist?
  - idrios 10y ago
    I'd donate money to an open-source self-driving-car project. Imagine being able to download the schematics for the car, order relevant commercial parts, 3D print the exterior, connect to a specialized Raspberry Pi with cameras and sensors, built-in GPS, ... I don't actually know how you would do this but if Google can build a self-driving car, then why couldn't an independent group of motivated people who don't have any conflict of interest also make one?
    - justinlardinois 10y ago
      Why doesn't an open source photo editor as good as Photoshop exist? The answer to both is that both require highly talented programmers and designers with a lot domain-specific knowledge, and most if not all of the people who fit that bill are getting paid to do it commercially.
beardog 10y ago
"well thats the stupidest f-ing thing i've read all day" (The idea, not the article). Serious privacy invasion & would never work in practice.
edgall 10y ago
While texting and driving is definitely an issue, this isn't the solution. It would be much more appropriate to implement ways that remind people that this is dangerous behaviour. Preferably there should be something done during driving tests to see how people react. Something like calling the participants phone when in a safe environment to see how they react. Of course people could plan for it but that would be the point.
yakult 10y ago
here's how it'll work: they'll have two phone-readers: one 'by the book' which really 'just' reads the metadata and puts it i their database. The second is basically an exploit kit that dumps your data by any exploit they can find. The theory being they'll use the first for motorists and the second for terrorists. But then someone will figure it's terribly convenient for drug and organised crime too. And tax evasion. And tickets. Soon everybody gets the exploit kit but they'll whip out the first one for press ops.
analog31 10y ago
A potential argument for making the Breathalyzer mandatory is that the alcohol dissipates over time, and has to be detected while it's still present. Also, the Breathalyzer measures nothing but alcohol. There's no such immediacy with phone activity, especially since phone logs are stored permanently somewhere other than the phone. If the police need to search the driver's phone records, they can tell it to a judge and get a search warrant. So the analogy to the Breathalyzer just isn't a good one. And, a casual search of phone records could turn up all sorts of stuff, encouraging use of the Textalyzer as a pretext for conducting a broader search.
- pdkl95 10y ago
  > they can tell it to a judge and get a search warrant This is clearly an attempt to ignore Riley v. California. As Justice Roberts said at the end of the unanimous opinion[1]: Our answer to the question of what police must do before searching a cell phone seized incident to an arrest is accordingly simple—get a warrant. [1] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/573/13-132/opinion3.html https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/573/13-132/opini...
- levemi 10y ago
  The concept of a Textalyzer also ignores the capacity for apps themselves to be the cause of the activity. For example IFTTT could be sending texts as a result of some trigger. The messaging app could be retrying to send a message that was sent previously. You might have auto-email set up. The entire concept is flawed. That your phone has engaged in some kind of activity is not indicative that the human who owns the phone did so manually. It's a technically ignorant news article about technically ignorant politicians creating technically ignorant laws that don't really help.
  - justinlardinois 10y ago
    Textalyzer isn't the judge, jury, and executioner here. You're not going to have your phone scanned and then be immediately carted off to prison for the rest of your life because an app sent an auto text. All of the data it pulls from your phone is going to _evidence_ that could be used in court. I'm still not on board with it, but I don't think false positives are as big of a deal as people here are making them out to be.
ams6110 10y ago
I see cops using their phones and laptops while driving as much as I see anyone else do it. Will they exempt themselves? Or will they be required to submit their phone to the textalyzer at the end of each shift?
mmaunder 10y ago
First they'd have to unlock the iphones. And around we go.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
guelo 10y ago
The "Textalyzer" tech is from Cellebrite, the same Israeli company that sold the FBI the 0-day for the San Beradino shooter's iPhone. Here's their product page for the device http://www.cellebrite.com/Mobile-Forensics/Solutions/ufed-field-series http://www.cellebrite.com/Mobile-Forensics/Solutions/ufed-fi...
- justinlardinois 10y ago
  So what (legally) happens if my phone stores data in a way that this device isn't designed to process? Unlikely since I'm sure they support all major mobile OSes, but I could see it happening occasionally.
westward 10y ago
Driving while using a mobile and drunk driving are qualitatively different for at least one important reason... If I'm talking or texting while I'm driving, I can stop if traffic patterns become sketchy. I can't suddenly stop being drunk. Clear and dry with light traffic is very different than snow in a construction zone. Phone use is something I can stop doing. The same can't be said for being drunk.
dejawu 10y ago
I think there might be a way to minimize the privacy risk here: Let Textalyzer data only be read over a physical USB cable, and only expose the time and duration of the activity, not the nature of it. Then police can see whether a driver has been using their phone without digging further. Of course, I don't have high hopes that it'll actually be implemented like this, and I fully expect if this does come out to see a headline a year later along the lines of "Textalyzer protocol exposes private user data/allows arbitrary code execution!"

39 points by state 10y ago

Terrible and flawed on so many levels I can't believe it

This won't work. iOS has disk and file encryption, and you cannot access this kind of data without being unlocking. Forcing someone to provide a PIN has been ruled against the first amendment.

npizzolato 10y ago
Couldn't the same be said for a breathalyzer? Forcing someone to breathe into a machine could be seen as forced "speech" in the same way giving up a password is. That seems to be allowed since the only penalty for refusing is losing your license (as opposed to some kind of criminal charge). Honest question btw.
- koolba 10y ago
  Most states have laws on the books that require you to agree to a sobriety check as a precondition of getting a driver's license. I think that also includes agreeing to a blood-draw if you get booked for DWI. Refusing is grounds for revocation of your license. Now all that aside, this is quite a stretch ... If the 5th amendment protects you from disclosing a password under a court order, there's no reason you should have to unlock your phone just because a police officer asks you too. Come to think of it, pretty sure that applies that unlocking your trunk either unless the officer has a warrant.
- magicalist 10y ago
  > Couldn't the same be said for a breathalyzer? Yes, actually, and that question (wrt criminal penalties some states have heaped on) happens to be in front of the Supreme Court right now in Birchfield v. North Dakota[1] (though not for the first amendment, GP is off course there). Sibling comments are correct on the legal theory behind allowing punishments for refusing to take a breathalyzer test, but it's clearly questionable whether a state should be allowed to issue criminal penalties for availing yourself of your rights. If such a thing were generally allowed, warrants wouldn't be necessary in most cases: let us search your person/phone/car/house/papers without a warrant unless you want severe automatic penalties, etc. [1] http://www.scotusblog.com/2016/04/argument-analysis-criminal-penalties-for-refusal-to-take-a-breathalyzer-test-in-jeopardy/ http://www.scotusblog.com/2016/04/argument-analysis-criminal...
  - ams6110 10y ago
    If we would simply hold people liable for the consequences of their actions we would not need DUI laws or breathalyzer "implied consent" attached to driving.
    - smileysteve 10y ago
      Seriously. Distracted and reckless driving have been laws long before cell phones or laws against drinking while driving. Distracted and reckless driving already carry large fines and are much more subjective with much less burden of proof than finding a text message on a phone.
      - pdkl95 10y ago
        Drunk driving laws are really addressing the problem indirectly. The whole point is that EtOH affects stuff like reaction time, motor control, situational awareness, and risk assessment. The source doesn't matter, if you are not able to meet a minimum ability in those skills, then driving is a going to be dangerous. The source of the problem doesn't matter. Instead of the breathalyzer (or other tests for EtOH) we should be testing for ability. I suspect this shouldn't be hard or expensive, for example, to make a portable device that implemented objective tests[1] of ability. Obviously some research would be needed to determine which skills need to be tested and to calibrate the minimum-ability cutoffs. [1] like this reaction time test: https://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/java/redgreen.html https://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/java/redgreen.html
  - 0xcde4c3db 10y ago
    > unless you want severe automatic penalties Isn't that basically how traffic tickets work in general? As far as I understand it, you have the option of rejecting the ticket as long as you're willing to be arrested for the offense instead.
    - ams6110 10y ago
      Not really. The ticket is just documentation of the officer's charge that you violated whatever law. You can sign it or not, tear it up, you'll still be on the docket at the local courthouse at some date in the near future, and if you don't show up you'll get a bench warrant for failure to appear.
- filiwickers 10y ago
  It's called "implied consent". You have to agree to submit to a breathalyzer when driving in order to get your license. All states use this type of law for breathalyzer among other things.
  - npizzolato 10y ago
    My point being, if you can be made to agree to submit to a breathalyzer when driving before you get a license, why can't you be made to agree to submit to this text-analyzer when driving before you get a license? I'm not saying this would be a good thing, but they seem very similar to me.
    - koenigdavidmj 10y ago
      Implied consent still generally (up to your state) requires reasonable suspicion. It would likely be unconstitutional to have an implied consent law to search your trunk (or your phone). The breathalyzer has the immediacy requirement described elsewhere in this thread, which doesn't apply to your phone. The only reason to avoid getting a warrant is convenience.
tater_sent_me 10y ago
Somehow constitutional protections don't apply to things they arbitrarily deem to be privileges. Try and refuse a Breathalyzer and see what happens.
jlubawy 10y ago
Did you mean the fifth amendment?
revelation 10y ago
This is missing the point. You can also refuse a breathalyzer, but will then naturally have your license suspended. Driving is not a right in any sense, it's a privilege.
filiwickers 10y ago
This is not against the first/fifth amendment because you will have already consented to it. Similar to a Breathalyzer you will have "implied consent" when you get a license. Either you consent to this and get your license or you don't consent and you lose it/cannot get it. Driving is not a right, you need to follow the rules and consent to certain things in order to do it.
- SamReidHughes 10y ago
  The thing is, driving is actually a human right.
  - taneq 10y ago
    I don't think you need a state-granted license to exercise a human right.
    - SamReidHughes 10y ago
      You need one to practice medicine.
      - justinlardinois 10y ago
        Is practicing medicine a human right?
        taneq 10y ago
        You could maybe argue that the actual practice of medicine is a human right, but offering medical advice to others as a paid service is certainly not.
        SamReidHughes 10y ago
        Pursuing the career of your choice, for the purpose of making profit, is also a human right.
mc32 10y ago
It's not that hard. Since the study claims up to 70% of accidents can be attributed to distraction and phones being a major chunk insurance companies can offer willing participants 30% discount vs people who opt out.... Watch people opt in for the discount.

lost_my_pwd 10y ago

Hmmm... I have asked other's in the car to read and respond to text when I am driving. I can also read and respond (canned text) to texts in my car using voice or steering wheel controls. Seems like this is either very misguided/flawed, simply a feel-good measure, a way to funnel public money to a connected company, or some combination of the three.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

stordoff 10y ago

Setting aside the obvious technical and privacy concerns for a second, how do they intend to handle cases where more than one person is in the car? If I'm driving with my mother, I'll fairly often read a text to her and she will dictate a response. If you didn't see that interaction, it seems indistinguishable from if she was texting whilst driving.

justinlardinois 10y ago
That's that the courts are for.

pwendelboe 10y ago

Well this seems like a horrible privacy invasion. I can't imagine that they won't also look at the contents when they are analyzing the device. It would have to be baked into the phone and as such could probably be bypassed anyway. We really need more technologically competent representatives...

blazespin 10y ago

invest in self driving cars

yakult 10y ago
You mean the ones made by google, connected to the cloud 24/7, dumps its logs remotely on demand, and will lock its doors and drive you to the police station if its bayesian analysis thinks you're probably a terrorist?
- idrios 10y ago
  I'd donate money to an open-source self-driving-car project. Imagine being able to download the schematics for the car, order relevant commercial parts, 3D print the exterior, connect to a specialized Raspberry Pi with cameras and sensors, built-in GPS, ... I don't actually know how you would do this but if Google can build a self-driving car, then why couldn't an independent group of motivated people who don't have any conflict of interest also make one?
  - justinlardinois 10y ago
    Why doesn't an open source photo editor as good as Photoshop exist? The answer to both is that both require highly talented programmers and designers with a lot domain-specific knowledge, and most if not all of the people who fit that bill are getting paid to do it commercially.

beardog 10y ago

"well thats the stupidest f-ing thing i've read all day" (The idea, not the article). Serious privacy invasion & would never work in practice.

edgall 10y ago

While texting and driving is definitely an issue, this isn't the solution. It would be much more appropriate to implement ways that remind people that this is dangerous behaviour. Preferably there should be something done during driving tests to see how people react. Something like calling the participants phone when in a safe environment to see how they react. Of course people could plan for it but that would be the point.

yakult 10y ago

here's how it'll work: they'll have two phone-readers: one 'by the book' which really 'just' reads the metadata and puts it i their database. The second is basically an exploit kit that dumps your data by any exploit they can find. The theory being they'll use the first for motorists and the second for terrorists. But then someone will figure it's terribly convenient for drug and organised crime too. And tax evasion. And tickets. Soon everybody gets the exploit kit but they'll whip out the first one for press ops.

analog31 10y ago

A potential argument for making the Breathalyzer mandatory is that the alcohol dissipates over time, and has to be detected while it's still present. Also, the Breathalyzer measures nothing but alcohol. There's no such immediacy with phone activity, especially since phone logs are stored permanently somewhere other than the phone. If the police need to search the driver's phone records, they can tell it to a judge and get a search warrant. So the analogy to the Breathalyzer just isn't a good one. And, a casual search of phone records could turn up all sorts of stuff, encouraging use of the Textalyzer as a pretext for conducting a broader search.

pdkl95 10y ago
> they can tell it to a judge and get a search warrant This is clearly an attempt to ignore Riley v. California. As Justice Roberts said at the end of the unanimous opinion[1]: Our answer to the question of what police must do before searching a cell phone seized incident to an arrest is accordingly simple—get a warrant. [1] https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/573/13-132/opinion3.html https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/573/13-132/opini...
levemi 10y ago
The concept of a Textalyzer also ignores the capacity for apps themselves to be the cause of the activity. For example IFTTT could be sending texts as a result of some trigger. The messaging app could be retrying to send a message that was sent previously. You might have auto-email set up. The entire concept is flawed. That your phone has engaged in some kind of activity is not indicative that the human who owns the phone did so manually. It's a technically ignorant news article about technically ignorant politicians creating technically ignorant laws that don't really help.
- justinlardinois 10y ago
  Textalyzer isn't the judge, jury, and executioner here. You're not going to have your phone scanned and then be immediately carted off to prison for the rest of your life because an app sent an auto text. All of the data it pulls from your phone is going to _evidence_ that could be used in court. I'm still not on board with it, but I don't think false positives are as big of a deal as people here are making them out to be.

ams6110 10y ago

I see cops using their phones and laptops while driving as much as I see anyone else do it. Will they exempt themselves? Or will they be required to submit their phone to the textalyzer at the end of each shift?

mmaunder 10y ago

First they'd have to unlock the iphones. And around we go.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

guelo 10y ago

The "Textalyzer" tech is from Cellebrite, the same Israeli company that sold the FBI the 0-day for the San Beradino shooter's iPhone. Here's their product page for the device http://www.cellebrite.com/Mobile-Forensics/Solutions/ufed-field-series http://www.cellebrite.com/Mobile-Forensics/Solutions/ufed-fi...

justinlardinois 10y ago
So what (legally) happens if my phone stores data in a way that this device isn't designed to process? Unlikely since I'm sure they support all major mobile OSes, but I could see it happening occasionally.

westward 10y ago

Driving while using a mobile and drunk driving are qualitatively different for at least one important reason... If I'm talking or texting while I'm driving, I can stop if traffic patterns become sketchy. I can't suddenly stop being drunk. Clear and dry with light traffic is very different than snow in a construction zone. Phone use is something I can stop doing. The same can't be said for being drunk.

dejawu 10y ago

I think there might be a way to minimize the privacy risk here: Let Textalyzer data only be read over a physical USB cable, and only expose the time and duration of the activity, not the nature of it. Then police can see whether a driver has been using their phone without digging further. Of course, I don't have high hopes that it'll actually be implemented like this, and I fully expect if this does come out to see a headline a year later along the lines of "Textalyzer protocol exposes private user data/allows arbitrary code execution!"