If you're suggesting that the state should make driver's licenses contingent on owning a phone with a feature like this, I guess I'll just have to give up my car or my phone, then.
I’m saying that it’s reasonable for a police officer investigating a collision to ask the driver about a very common cause of collisions, just as we allow them to check for alcohol and require you to take a test if you appear to be impaired.
The feature described would be a nice way to support those questions in a manner which does not reveal private information, require you to unlock the phone, or otherwise risk giving them access beyond what’s needed to answer the questions during an official investigation. You could of course choose not to use it but why you’d want to give them additional access to your device is beyond me.
Sure, lots of people disagree with things but the law is what matters, not vibes. There’s a long-running precedent that investigating accidents makes it reasonable to ask what the operator of the vehicle was doing immediately before the crash.
I don’t see how that precedent applies. I can already easily answer their question without unlocking my device, and if they want evidence, they can get a warrant.
Even the breathalyzer requirement seems irrelevant, considering that it only requires you to submit to a breathalyzer performed by a police officer, rather than mandating that your BAC be available to anybody with physical access to your property.
> I can already easily answer their question without unlocking my device, and if they want evidence, they can get a warrant.
You can’t answer their question with anything but hearsay. This is why I brought up the DUI checks because we know some people are going to lie, and hard evidence can easily be acquired to sidestep that issue. The suggestion above would be similar in terms of having minimal privacy concern and because it’s cheap and easy it’d actually be done in non-egregious cases.
I reject your insistence that making an activity log, however opaque, visible to anybody with physical access to a device is a "minimal privacy concern." Repeating it as though it is settled fact does nothing to convince anybody. Perhaps if you'd ever had to deal with an abusive partner you'd see the obvious implications.
I also reject the comparison to DUI checks on the basis that those must be performed ASAP in order not to lose the evidence, thus necessitating urgency; the same doesn't apply to phones. As we've seen in, for example, the case of the Uber self-driving car operator who was using her phone when she killed a pedestrian, they were easily able to determine this after the fact, without such intrusive features.
The feature described would be a nice way to support those questions in a manner which does not reveal private information, require you to unlock the phone, or otherwise risk giving them access beyond what’s needed to answer the questions during an official investigation. You could of course choose not to use it but why you’d want to give them additional access to your device is beyond me.