This. And not just two phones but two laptops as well, unless the employer forbids bringing a personal one at work (which would be a reason to dump them in my case). Leave work stuff to work hardware and never ever use company assets for anything personal. A friend of mine who works for a big multinational telco (unrelated to Google) installed an open source tool on his company laptop; when he connected back on the corporate network, that tool got automatically deleted in a matter of minutes because it wasn't allowed for some reason and he got a notice about it. I can't recall the software used to keep control of corporate laptops, but according to what I heard from him it's widely used around and it catches everything: sites visited, software installs and runs, time spent working, screenshots, etc.

Why would you bring a personal laptop to work?

Sometimes your work computer is so locked down that some work tasks are made much easier by having a machine you have full access to.

For example we needed to program an Arduino-type board, but that's not possible with our work laptops (no admin rights, USB ports disabled, etc); we never found a solution other than a personal laptop. Or a colleague needed to run a supplier's simulation tool that needed admin rights, and couldn't get an exception fast enough. Or you need to run a Linux tool.

> Sometimes your work computer is so locked down that some work tasks are made much easier by having a machine you have full access to.

This is not very persuasive. What you really have there is two work laptops.

I sometimes need to do time critical things, or use sites or services, and I'm never giving personal credentials of any kind to client/employer hardware.

My personal laptop comes everywhere with me. Doesn't yours?

Nope. I find the personal phone sufficient. If corporate IT wants to know when I'm browsing linkedin, im fine with that.

Also, corporate has given itself the right to search any and all devices on me while at work, so that's double incentive to leave the home laptop at home.

In case you need to do something personal that can't wait until you get home. More of an issue with a longer commute. Might have to pop down to a local coffee shop or use the personal phone's hotspot to avoid using corp net.

I've had to check an account while at work to deal with my kid attempting to pay college tuition with one of my credit cards. Also looked up records so he could call the DMV to rectify something. Yeah, sometimes they're things that can wait a day, but a break from bug hunting can be nice.

It’s this sort of thing that makes me really appreciate my cell-connected personal iPad, with keyboard cover. It’s a “personal laptop” in 50% of the volume that I can ~always have with me.

>> People laugh at me why I carry two phones but this is the main reason.

I carry three. One is from work, the other is from a different department in that same work. They both insist I have a particular type of phone running particular software. But work never calls me on those phones. They always call my personal phone.

Do you accept work calls on your personal number? - if so that’s sounds more like training issue.

Ill bring that up with my commander.

Ditto. I find it bizarre that there's people who use the same device to span pictures of their weekends and their kids, as photos of whiteboards with highly-confidential trade secrets. Tawdry jokes with friends and family alongside messages from your manager.

We use the same mind, same hands, same eyes for all of those things as well.

People view and use their phone as an extension to their body. I don't think it's possible to change that.

It’s a tool, like any other. If you use a tool for work or even a serious hobby, you are quite likely to end up with two or more of them.

To build on your analogy, in some cultures people use exclusively one of their hands to eat, and the other to clean their butts. We could learn do the same with two phones, I guess.

With android work profiles I don't think it's that big a deal.

It's isolated from my phone, my employer can't see anything outside the profile and I just disable it on weekends/vacations.

> With android work profiles I don't think it's that big a deal.

It's not a big deal... until it is. Like when your boss/coworker gets involved in a work dispute and you get dragged into a deposition.

You misunderstood - Android Work profile doesn't allow the employer to access any of your personal information. It keeps work and personal things separate by a wall.

iOS doesn't allow that however - there the Apple will give everything over to employer if they so ask.

No, I don't misunderstand. A deposition won't care whether things are separated by a software wall. A deposition will want everything on the device. So it's better to just not mix the two at all.

Does a deposition care when you say you didn't use your personal phone for work? Why wouldn't they ask for your so-called personal phone?

IANAL. I just have some knowledge/experience.

A deposition about a work related issue may ask to see all devices that you use in connection with your employer. So yes, a deposition will care when you say you didn't use your personal phone for work if you can prove it by it not being on any device list found with work-related services.

A device list can be obtained (usually easily, sometimes with a court order) through many services you use. G Suite, Github, Microsoft Account, Slack, Reddit, etc... these all track what devices have logged into them with your account. Signal and Telegram have your phone number. And of course any email sent has a list of addresses to which it was sent. So make sure your personal devices aren't found to be communicating with coworkers or vendors and you'll have a valid argument for "I didn't use my personal device for work".

Whether it will stick will largely depend on how good the lawyers are because that's just one way your device can be in scope for a deposition. Another way would be if any messages from coworkers are sent to/from your personal email or phone number then that can also bring your devices into the scope of a deposition. It might depend on whether the content or context of the messages suggests that they're related to the subject of the deposition and that the conversation had been moved (eg, an attempt to hide it). Again, it largely depends on the quality of the lawyers involved.

Depositions don't assume you are honest.

The ony way that would be possible is by them physically taking the device off you and asking for all your pin codes / passwords. The 'work profile' feature uses app-sandbox which in effects means every app runs as a Linux type isolated UID (not to differnt to a container), there is no breach around that unless some zero day attack comes to light, which would bw patched way before acme corps IT department picks it up.

They need you to hand it over. If its your personal device, you just say piss off, no you can't have it.

>> They need you to hand it over. If its your personal device, you just say piss off, no you can't have it.

That's not how a subpoena works if it's on the same physical device. Good luck finding a judge who understands the concept of a "software wall."

So you're saying that judge will ignore the separate profiles but it'll magically stop from depositioning all your phones that might contain work conversations?

That's a tall order.

Also, the title says that GOOGLE spied on someone - which is not a deposition, is it?

I'm not sure how these subpoenas usually are worded specifically, but it doesn't seem like that contrived of a situation. Like, if you aren't the suspect and are ordered to hand over all devices used to communicate to <suspicious co-worker X>, if you have a separate device you just hand the thing over. If you hand over a personal phone, they are presumably going to bump into your walled off section and have some questions. Plus, you don't have a phone, while they are working on the thing, which seems like a pain.

This is assuming you aren't in a "hand over all electronic devices" kind of situation.

>> So you're saying that judge will ignore the separate profiles but it'll magically stop from depositioning all your phones that might contain work conversations?

Yes.

Source: Been subpoenaed three times and my attorneys have had restrictions placed on what can/cannot be searched... like I am assuming most competent attorneys can provide. The party has to have reasonable indication that relevant data is on personal devices so the opposing counsel doesn't go goldfishing through a bunch of stuff to turn up potentially unrelated dirt in discovery.

US centric, but courtrooms don’t have time to hear about the technicalities that show something isn’t possible. They only care that they think it’s possible. Judges aren’t programmers and the law isn’t black and white like code.

Also, you can’t just not respond to a deposition or refuse to hand over your phone as evidence in a crime. That’s obstruction of justice and possibly contempt of court.

Basically, you can sit there for hours on end explaining that it’s impossible to break the “wall”, but that’s time and time in money in the court system (literally), or you can just fork over the phone because it’s not your personal one.

Make phones that self-destruct all data if the device is handed over. It should be hardcoded to do so and that should not be an editable setting by the user.

The primary reason for this would be against thieves, but it would work against courts as well, and the user wouldn't have a choice.

Again. Destruction of evidence is a crime. Even if it’s not a choice for the user, the usage of such a feature would be a crime. And also again: the law and the courts don’t care about technicalities, no matter your opinion on that matter.

People here are choosing to make things harder for themselves by coming up with ideas to skirt the law, but it doesn’t work and will only make the police go harder on you. The law (and precedent) is not on your side in this battle.

Are you sure? This is a nuanced issue. Ehat counts as "usage". Intentionally destroying evidence is a crime, but broadly automatically destroying data before you have any knowledge of an allegation is not. (Otherwise, thinks lke GDPR would be illegal in the US)

We’re talking about depositions, so the knowledge of an investigation followed by destruction of the data (whether intention or not) by handing the device over would be a crime. I can’t hand my phone over to the police and remote wipe it with iCloud, for example.

Destruction when handing to a mugger is still ok.

Well it wouldn't be the user destroying data.

Judge: "Hand over that phone right now"

You: "Sure, I can hand it over, but all data will then get wiped by the device automatically due to Google/Apple/Samsung's anti-theft design and I don't have a choice"

After that it's upto the Judge whether to proceed with the handover or not. It will be the judge who destroyed the data if so.

As I said before: technicalities don’t work. You’re not getting out of this. If you told the judge that, he’d change his order to hand over the data in a different way. Have fun sitting down with the police while they copy all of the data off by hand while you show them each item.

Judges don't appreciate clever tricks of any kind, and neither does the law. Anything you think of that sounds like a clever trick is not something you should actually try.

No, it wouldn't even be my trick. It would be a feature of the design of the phone and I, the user, would not even have a choice in that implementation.

The primary motive of that design would be against thieves, but it would incidentally happen to work on judges as well. The owners of the phones would have no choice.

It doesn’t matter. Judges don’t care and they have very broad authority to get what they want. You’re not getting off on a technicality. It’s that simple.

Well I wouldn't have a choice, so it wouldn't matter. They can get angry at the phone manufacturer instead of me.

@cutemonster

Yes, they could do that, and of course, in that case, my eyes would be on it and they would only be able to ask for things pertinent to the case, which likely means all corporate accounts, not dig through personal accounts.

Them being unable to take the actual device means that they'd have to play by the rules.

Can't they tell you to click buttons and type on the phone on their behalf, until they've gotten what they want, whilst an assistant looks across your shoulder telling you what to do/click next?

Let me know how that goes for you if you ever have the unfortunate opportunity to try it.

What does that have to do with accusation that Google read the messages? From the topic?

This far into the thread, it changed to justifying two phones for reasons of possible deposition. I was explaining why it’s a good idea to do that.

That doesn't make sense. They can request both of your phones just as easily as they can request access to your personal profile on an Android phone.

The idea is based on the idea (heh) that warrants must be tailored to the crime. I can’t get a warrant for your dining room then go upstairs into your bedroom to explore. Now, if a cop saw, say, drug paraphernalia in the kitchen while looking for something else, that’s fine, but they can’t go on random searches (also why they can’t search your car for no reason).

That idea extended to civil procedure and phones is that the discovery process for a civil case would be for things related to the lawsuit of which your personal phone might not be. They could certainly request it, but a good lawyer would argue that your personal phone has no connection to the work phone (of which the lawsuit is about) as evidenced by the fact that you have two phones (you intend to separate the two matters). Separate profiles on the same computer (phone) would be harder to argue.

It’s not a clear cut matter and would certainly depend on how the judge is feeling, but if there’s a possibility of keeping your personal and work life separate, why not do so? Don’t put all your eggs (data) in one basket (phone) and the like.

> The ony way that would be possible is by them physically taking the device off you and asking for all your pin codes / passwords.

Which is likely legally allowed for a deposition.

> They need you to hand it over. If its your personal device, you just say piss off, no you can't have it.

Telling the courts/lawyers to piss off is not a viable option. That's not how depositions work. You might be able to get a lawyer to file legal motions with expert testimony attached pointing out they shouldn't need access to the whole phone for the reasons you said, but 99% of people will not bother getting a lawyer for something like this.

Is that how depositions work though? Being deposed means being asked questions in a very official manner by opposing counsel. During discovery, they can issue a subpoena/warrant which gives them permission to take your possessions.

Or you could just get really drunk and lose your phone. Happens all the time. The phone company will verify you called for a replacement and the bar will verify you got trashed.

IANAL but this strikes me as bad advice.

IANAL, but isn't that obstruction of justice and/or contempt of court?

Yes, probably. That would presumably be why this suggestion includes details that would make proving your intent difficult.

> Telling the courts/lawyers to piss off is not a viable option. That's not how depositions work. You might be able to get a lawyer to file legal motions with expert testimony attached pointing out they shouldn't need access to the whole phone for the reasons you said, but 99% of people will not bother getting a lawyer for something like this.

No, that is now how subpoenas and depositions work. I've been involved in a few. The judge needs a specific reason to approve inclusion of your personal device: like a record of information having been sent to it specifically or being used in a context relevant to the case at hand. And the information request will have to be specific to the case at hand, so you can just return with "There is no information on those devices relevant to the subpoena parameters" (said under oath).

If they demand your personal device anyway, because the subpoena is too broad or something, you can fight it with the judge and argue why it shouldn't be included.

If you never, ever mix personal and work then you should have no difficulty getting your personal devices excluded from a work related inquiry.

> iOS doesn't allow that however - there the Apple will give everything over to employer if they so ask.

Regular MDM used to do that (just as Android used to do that), but Apple has been working on the same "wall" to separate work and personal info.

https://www.apple.com/business/docs/resources/Managing_Devic...

https://simplemdm.com/apple-user-enrollment/

I would still be concerned that laws are still focused on physical things. Even if there’s a personal / work virtual barrier, I wouldn’t want the presence of work information anywhere on a personal device transmuting that device into a work device in the eyes of the law.

When vulnerabilities are found which meltdown (pun intended) those barriers perhaps it's not such a bad idea that the law is oldschool here. It's a sobering reminder that those walls are indeed only imaginary.

It is utterly insane to me how confused people are in the rest of this thread. There are people getting paid like $200,000 a year, and they can't be bothered to pay a lawyer $3,000 to read their employment contract once and explain any of this to them?

What's the point of a $3000 contract review if the employer's response will be "Not changing it, sign or walk."

What we know is one person said that's what happened.

I certainly know of people who have suggested and gotten changes to agreements like this. But you need to be professional about it.

What do you mean by professional here? My guess is some mix of emotional detachment, serious tone and use of the right jargon and vocabulary?

Put bluntly, being a PITA when it wasn't at all necessary, as corp-issued devices are common. If I were a manager hiring this guy and heard that he kicked back the standard contract everyone else has for a pointless reason that had a workaround everyone already knows about, I'd have ended it right there because it casts their judgment in a poor light and I could see them causing me or my department issues in the future.

"Poor culture fit".

This is not an answer to the above thread.

"What do you mean by professional here?", the answer to which is "not being a PITA for no reason". Seems pretty direct to me.

The comment I replied to claimed that being professional about requesting a change to your contract can get you the requested change approved, implying that being unprofessional will get you kicked out. My question was, how to be professional in the way that will get your change more likely to be accepted. If you claim that you can not get the change approved in any way, then you are not answering me, but contradicting the comment I was replying to. Sorry if breaking it down like this seems condescending.

No offense taken. My point here is that this entire process of "changing the contract" was unnecessary on its face, and everyone involved knew it. The professional thing to do would have been to not spend the cycles even pursuing it.

It's like asking what the best way to write a lisp in INTERCAL would be. The best way is to not do it.

The thing is, from many sources I keep hearing that the suggested unchangability of terms and pay is just a negotiation tactic. They will come to you with printed documents, with policies that things totally cannot be changed, it's like that in the system, there is just no way. Then in many cases magically there are suddenly ways to change all those things after some more negotiation. You obviously need a strong position for this, good alternative offers etc, but you don't have to be Michael Jordan for the above story to happen.

A lot more things are open to negotiation than some people imagine. Even including buying a fridge at your local chain store or similar. Not every time, and not to everyone who merely says "I want".

I'd get a lawyer to advise on the text and the change, make sure it really means what you think it does. And talk to them about your concerns, explain why you want the change. Make it clear you are open to other reasonable solutions.

Well, it helps you decide whether to sign, or to walk, right?

But who would pay $3K for a contract review??

...someone whom Google is about to make a millionaire?

Employment contracts are fairly uniform, and just not that complicated. A simple contract review is not expensive. One or two hours, a few hundred dollars per -- if you're feeling fancy.

Special cases are special. But most cases are not special.

Fun fact: If a judge orders you to surrender your phone because it might contain evidence relating to a case, it doesn't matter how you've segregated data on your phone.

Sometimes businesses literally put some services on different physical boxes in case a court sees fit to collect the entire machine. If you had a bunch of other VMs on it... shrug.

We need an OS that self-destructs all data if surrendered, and that should be a hardcoded feature of the OS.

Something like a fingerprint scanner that needs to be scanned at least once every 24 hours or all data gets erased.

Only if it is a state owned (diplomatic) device. Without diplomatic protection, you can be can be charged with, depending on jurisdiction and circumstance, anything from evidence tampering, obstruction of justice, to contempt of court. Technical hacks to human problems are only viable when you are shielded by sovereignty.

Typically what I've seen is if something is policy before hand, then it's legal, such as retention policies for email. In this case to do something similar, you would need the phone to not retain more than 24 hours of information or similar or be jumped and have your devices forcibly taken a away and get into some sort of 5th amendment edge case where you don't have to give the contents of your mind / say anything.

Judge: "Hand over that phone right now"

You: "Sure, I can hand it over, but all data will then get wiped by the device automatically due to Google/Apple/Samsung's anti-theft hardware design and I don't have a choice in the software settings to disable that"

After that it's upto the Judge whether to proceed with the handover or not.

At this point, if the judge proceeds with the handover, it will be the judge who destroyed evidence.

This still means you don't have your personal phone if you have to surrender your work one, and they live on the same hardware.

Even if you wiped the data, if the government wants to seize your crud, they're still gonna take it.

You just buy a new personal phone in that case. At least the data is wiped the moment they seized it.

Imagine a hypothetical phone that is covered in fingerprint sensors where if it senses foreign hands touching it, it auto-deletes everything. That might not be the most feasible hardware implementation but I'm sure we can think of something to that effect.

>We need an OS that self-destructs all data if surrendered, and that should be a hardcoded feature of the OS.

You want to automate the destruction of evidence? I understand thats typically treated as confirming whatever is the most damaging possibility.

Probably not applicable in OP's case. If XYZ company was my employer, the last tools I'd use to protect my data and communications would be any of XYZ's products.

Depends on the application. We run Blackberry UEM, and good luck it seeing profiles. The application just wants to take over the entire phone doesn't matter if it is an iPhone or Android.

I walk around with two phones now, one for work and my personal one.

Google is a special case, via play store the effectively have complete control of almost every android phone.

Its foolish to think they wouldn't use it.

yeah android phones are totally safe from google

Another important thing: under US law should there be any legal dispute, or investigation involving your employer you might be required to submit your work phone for search. If you don't want court, SEC or FBI going through your private stuff then it's better to keep those things on a different phone.

Don't you take both phones to work though? I could totally see a zealous legal team asking for both, and that being an annoying thing to deal with. Same thing with personal hardware used at home, but the company allowing at work from home.

Anyone who laughs at a professional keeping a physical security barrier between work and personal data isn't a professional themselves and can be safely ignored.

I usually have four phones: Work, Personal, Personal (other country sim), emergency backup (in a buddy pouch, powered off).

I admire you for this, I have thought about doing the same thing many times. And also making a habit of only bringing the corporate phone (and not the personal one) with me when crossing into the US for work. "Sure, feel free to search away on this phone, have at it..."

I'm kind of surprised by the option to use a personal phone anyway. Whenever I've worked at big tech, there has never been an option to use a personal device or laptop. Even getting a USB port enabled takes a VP to ok it often. But this tends to be in R&D depts.

> 100% agree. People laugh at me why I carry two phones but this is the main reason.

I technically carry 4 phones...

>Want to go on vacation and still have my phone but not be bothered by company emails and calls. If you use a work profile on Android, you can disable it, eg at holidays or weekends. Not sure about the privacy.

I'm far more practical, I use my own phone, or I can use work phone me for personal use without restriction and without rootkits.

If you require rootkits then the work phone is now a desk phone.

Two phones, even two laptops and you're probably still carrying less weight then an original cellular phone with a strap.

I also don’t take my work phone with me outside of work hours unless I’m oncall.

Even better. I have zero phone. Do you really need a phone in 2020? No. I refuse to own a computer I can't write a code running on it and distribute it freely.

I didn’t know HN implemented RFC 2549