Don’t ever hand your phone to the cops

By Gaby Del Valle , a policy reporter. Her past work has focused on immigration politics, border surveillance technologies, and the rise of the New Right.

It’s going to become increasingly tempting for the cops to ask and for you to comply, especially as more and more states adopt digital ID systems that allow driver’s licenses and state IDs to be added to Apple Wallet on iOS and Google Wallet on Android. Californians can now add their driver’s licenses and state IDs to their iPhones and Apple Watches in addition to Android devices, making the state one of seven — alongside Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Maryland, Hawaii, and Ohio — to allow storing digital IDs through Apple’s system.

These particular digital IDs are so far pretty limited. California’s are for use at “select TSA checkpoints” and participating businesses, for instance — they aren’t meant to be used as identification in traffic stops or other police interactions, which means users are supposed to continue carrying their physical IDs. But other states — including Louisiana and Colorado — have rolled out their own digital IDs that can be used during traffic stops and other police interactions, which may have fewer privacy protections. And Apple’s vision for Apple Pay has long been explicitly to replace your entire wallet, which means that eventually, these IDs will be meant for use during police stops.

No matter what, teaching people they can add their IDs to their phones means some people will inevitably leave the house without physical ID, and that means creating the opportunity for cops to demand phones — which you should never, ever do. Technical details of your digital ID aside, handing your phone to a police officer grants law enforcement a lot of power over some of your most intimate personal data.

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