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Don’t ever hand your phone to the cops
(www.theverge.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I personally rather trust that my device isn't able to be unlocked without my permission, rather than hope I am able to do some action to disable it in certain situations. The availability of such features is nice, but I would assume I would be incapable of performing such actions in the moment.
My other thought is, how guilty is one perceived if they immediately attempt to lock their phones in such a matter, by a jury of their peers? I rather go the deniability route of I didn't want to share my passcode vs I locked my phone down cause the cops were grabbing me.
For most phones, just rebooting it will drop it back to bio + passcode. That's the quick method for me.
This will also put the device in the "before first unlock" state, which will make it harder to extract data, even with physical access. After first unlock some data might be accessed even without the passcode when connecting the phone to a computer
This is good to know, but adds an additional step to simply requiring a passcode to unlock on screen lock.
It's also much more secure to reboot (and not unlock) it, should it be taken from you and potentially tried to be broken into or compromised in some way, usually to extract data and perform forensics. A phone that has been unlocked is weaker with protection than one which has been restarted and awaiting first unlock.