Welcome to the Ultimate ID Lockdown-Eraser app (UIDLE) project page.
The Ultimate ID Lockdown-Eraser (UIDLE, pronounced 'you-ideally' or alternatively, "you-idle") is a system for providing basic proof of identity plus contact information to interested parties, while protecting all other personal data (on a given device, or in the Cloud) from being trivially accessed by these same parties. Metaphorically, it presents an ideal version of you, without all the messy complications of your personal, non-official data.
The system components include an integrated firewall app, packet inspection/logging app, all the good network tools, maybe a jail-shell (.e.g. rsh or jailed bash)...plus a special "NRSN" app. NRSN stands for Name, Rank, and Serial Number. In an emergency, the NRSN app will activate the ID-Lockdown-Erase process simply by touching an NRSN icon, after which the process is automated, hands free, distributed, and resistant to being interrupted.
To understand how NRSN and other components of UIDLE might work, here is a use case.
Most government entities are moving towards fully electronic records. Some have gone a step further, and provide software that lets you use a phone, tablet, laptop, browser, etc app to present or generate proof of ID, and other licenses/proofs, without having to carry a physical ID card. This official software would have several advantages. The end-user could restore their electronic ID from backups if their primary device or ID card is lost; they could access their ID from the Cloud if needed. In the case of identity theft, an officially-sanctioned ID system may allow you to quickly invalidate your existing serial numbers, license ID numbers, GUID's, etc. and replace them with new ones.
However, showing your device to an official, or handing it to them to examine, could lead to the device being seized, or at least, temporary out of your control. Unfortunately, privacy laws vary greatly between jurisdictions, and are very much in flux, meaning that handing your device to an official for a simple ID check could expose the entire contents of the device to confiscation, duplication, damage, tampering, or other undesired effects.
Imagine a driver with the official driver's license app on their phone becomes involved in an undesired encounter with an official.
"Certainly officer, let me see if I can get my license to display on my phone?"
Note, you haven't yet actually told them the license is on the phone, or given permission for them to look at the phone, or use it. Normally at this point you might launch the official app; thanks to UIDLE, you now have the option of using an innocuous icon to launch the NRSN app, which does a number of things in the background. However, the only visible result will be for the NRSN app to launch the official driver's license app in an opaque 'sandbox' virtual machine.
At some point, you pretty much have to give them access to your drivers license info. No point annoying them with delays, so show or hand them the device.
"OK, officer, I found the app that displays my license, registration, and proof-of-insurance"
So now that the UIDLE process is under way, you hand the officer your phone, but state that it is only for the purposes of seeing your documents. You haven't given permission to use the phone for any other reason. After a moment, your screen locks to save power. In some jurisdictions, officials may be legally able to require you to provide your unlock passcode. Since your device is running sandboxed, you can cheerfully comply, secure in the knowledge that this passcode now simply re-displays the official driver's license app; any other action causes the phone to appear to reboot, or crash/freeze requiring a restart.
Meanwhile, the UIDLE system silently encrypts (or re-keys if already encrypted) the entire phone (Android phones would implement this using something like www.cyanogenmod.org), AND scrambles the passwords to all your Cloud accounts, saving these new passwords in a new, encrypted KeePass DB on the phone; It then (optionally) proceeds to sync everything it can back into the cloud, including a hint for the new KeePass passphrase, and possibly including a backup of phone system settings and non-Cloud data. If this process terminates, or fails for any reason, the phone will continue to display the NRSN documents, or else appear to reboot/crash/or reboot. Optionally, the UIDLE system could proceed to securely erase your phone's memory, SD card, operating system, etc, such that only a factory reset can restore access to the device. If asked why your phone appears broken, you can speculate that it might be broken, infected, etc.
From that point on, no matter what officials do to your phone they are limited to:
But you don't care, because you backed your stuff up, didn't you? Maybe you wait until they return your property, or you have to replace the device, but your private data is reasonably safe.
Of course, there's a chance your house will be raided after using the UIDLE app in the field...but, because they can't prove there's anything bad on the phone, it is a much harder for them to get their command structure to order that search...if so, they might find your old passwords, hardware keys, etc. but they'll not find the new password that UIDLE set up.
Ultimately, they can get an order for you to turn over all passwords to your other devices and Cloud account(s). You tell them you'll cooperate, but you need access to your other devices (PC's, etc.) and/or cloud accounts (iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc) in order to recall your passwords. Then you can make a show of trying to retrieve the relevant password, thereby delaying the process as long as needed i.e. until the other side gives up...all without ever formally violating the order to turn over your password (you were trying your best but it's hopeless, etc).
If you do recover your phone, the password hint will describe an algorithm for mapping your existing (old) password, that you memorized or stored offline some place, onto the password for the new KeePass database which the app emailed to you before erasing the phone, or else, kept on the phone if it couldn't get network access. The UIDLE system would include an app to let you use this new password to access your data, or restore your phone.
:-}
This project is in a very early stage. For now, I just want to protect the concept and allow others to improve it, as discussed in the license details, below.
What do you think? Drop me a line at uidle@landofdelight.com.
Created 12/11/2014
2/6/2015. Fixed license metadata. Edited for clarity. Added contact email. Published as Rev. 1.
The Ultimate ID Lockdown-Eraser system (UIDLE, pronounced 'you-ideally') by Land Of Delight Communications is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, as is the NRSN app concept, and the full text of this page (http://www.landofdelight.com/UIDLE/index.html).
Based on a work at https://plus.google.com/u/0/+JaredBrownWebGraphics/posts/D8xBu2WqdqX.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available, contact uidle@landofdelight.com.
If you create images, binaries, or any other non-text objects related to UIDLE, you must include this metadata in the object's metadata.