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.<p>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.<p>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.
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.<p>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.
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.
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...
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 <a href="http://www.cellebrite.com/Mobile-Forensics/Solutions/ufed-field-series" rel="nofollow">http://www.cellebrite.com/Mobile-Forensics/Solutions/ufed-fi...</a>
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.
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?
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.<p>The theory being they'll use the first for motorists and the second for terrorists.<p>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.
"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.
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.<p>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.
While texting and driving is definitely an issue, this isn't the solution.<p>It would be much more appropriate to implement ways that remind people that this is dangerous behaviour.<p>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.
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.<p>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!"