I didn't know about this great shortcut until today. Note that it isn't particularly "silent", as it displays an "Emergency SOS" slider that, when canceled, prompts you for your password.

Apparently, saying "Hey Siri, whose phone is this?" will disable biometrics as well.

Finally, you may be interested in the "Police" shortcut[1], which sends a text to a contact, starts recording voice and video, and saves it to the cloud.

[1] https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/2d68cb1ee7b84f08ace2fd600b9...

This does not work on 7+, at least. Nor does holding side button + volume up. Pressing the side button 5 times will bring up the emergency screen (just press "cancel" when it shows up) and disable biometrics.

power + volumeup displays on the screen but does not emit a noise.

I think the police shortcut got nerfed with 12.2, but I'm not sure.

I can't find any immediate results on the Police shortcut no longer working—almost every reference is from Q3 2018.

Unfortunately this is not adviseable if you have small children. A relative of mine saw her phone get wiped after letting my toddler fiddle with it for a few minutes.

He came to work one day pretty upset about Apple's "Delete your iPad when your kid plays with it" feature.

Perhaps don't let children fiddle with your work devices? That just sounds like an accident waiting to happen.

Now in the grand scheme of things, this is just an annoyance as I can restore the phone from up-to-date backups. If someone is concerned enough, they could also toggle the wipe feature on/off based on their travels and live with the risk of an accidental wipe knowing that things can be restored.

Once the phone is wiped you can restore the phone from backup. If you allow kids to play unsupervised with a phone for 4 hours, I hope you have it backed up for a variety of other worse case scenarios.

Yea... You might want to check that story. It's a staged timeout. First 1 minute, then 5, then 10, then an hour, then 3 hours or something like that.

Not that a toddler wasn't playing with the phone for 4 hours straight - just that if you let that happen you should expect a broken phone.

While you could do this before the police took position of the phone, it's important to point out that making any changes to the phone after it's in their possession, without permission, would be considered tampering with evidence.

So, disabling biometrics before going through TSA is probably OK. But mashing your finger five times on the power button when the police told you to unlock it will most likely result in some criminal charges.

You have to weigh the consequences. Let's say your phone has incontrovertible proof that you murdered someone, and you live in a state with the death penalty. The few years of prison you get for tampering with evidence is better than being executed, right? So it's still good to know.

I'm only thinking ethically, it's better to use technology to protect people from prosecution for victimless "crimes" than to support murder. ;)

It's obstruction either way.

Competent departments know to store the phone in a Faraday bag to prevent this, so it's not always an option in the first place.

I'm not sure if it's the same on other iPhone X models.

  Settings>Emergency SOS

You can also just restart the phone - at least on mine you can't login for the first time after a restart with a fingerprint.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18212978

Given my nick, I think i should rebind that to "do you have any relatives in afghanistan?"

These are all unnecessary, to various degrees. Compelling your fingerprint requires a warrant, which officers had in the linked case. The controversy is whether a search warrant of a property extends to compelling a fingerprint, not whether officers can go searching phones with abandon.

Specifically: - TSA officers aren't police officers. They can search you because you're entering an airport, but you're free to leave at any time (though they can detain you until police arrive, as any citizen can). - Within 100 miles of the border (not only the Mexican) officers can detain people momentarily or search vehicles to ascertain their citizenship. That's the only additional power they have, they can't search your phone (or even search your glove compartment) without probable cause. - When you're pulled over for a traffic stop, a search requires probable cause.

You didn't mention the one time you might think about doing this: going through customs, where your 4A rights are weaker and less certain. If you're interested in learning more, US vs Cotterman is a good jumping-off point.

That's the theory. In practice police can get away with pretty much anything, and if you make it to the point where a judge is listening to you, he/she won't be sympathetic.

You've seen the videos where the idiot cop didn't realize his camera was on and filmed himself placing drugs? This didn't just happen once.

Do you have any evidence for this? Courts routinely suppress evidence.

> and filmed himself placing drugs?

I saw the video; it's bad and it's an injustice. No one was convicted of a crime in this case, though I suspect others likely plead guilty in similar circumstances given their incentives in our current system.

But why does that affects your decision to lock your phone? Are you worried police are going to illegally compel a fingerprint from you and then put something on your phone?

Of course I can't comment on all judges, but in my few interactions with them, the court sides with the police. Call it an anecdote if you want, but "citation needed" comments wear thin.

> But why does that affects your decision to lock your phone? Are you worried police are going to illegally compel a fingerprint from you and then put something on your phone?

I worry about every interaction with a police officer. They are the single biggest threat I ever run into.

Even limiting your search to HN there is a plethora of examples of situations that OP describes where phones and devices have been invaded

But we have a court system that suppresses evidence that's gained from those violations, or any evidence that's found from information gained in those violations.

Do you have examples where courts have allowed that evidence to be used against people?

If they can detain you then how are you free to leave?

They have the same rights an any other citizen to detain you and call a police officer.

Citizen detention laws vary by state, but generally there's a fairly high standard of probability that you committed a crime.

https://www.tsa.gov/blog/2016/07/03/tsa-myth-busters-do-tsa-...