It's also safest to not hand the officer a bag of heroin and punch them in the face. None of these things (
including "
handing your unlocked phone to a police officer") have anything to do with having or using a digital drivers license, so why do you keep bringing that last one up as if it does? As I mentioned previously, it seems like you haven't taken the time to look into how this works:
- The mobile Drivers License (mDL) is in Apple Wallet.
- You double-click the side button of your iPhone to open Apple Wallet, and it uses FaceID to verify your identity.
- Apple Wallet opens and shows your default credit/debit card.
- You scroll to your mDL, which only displays your first (and possibly middle) name and your last initial (along with the name of your state and whatever artwork your state has chosen - for California, it's a painting of a bridge beside the ocean), and Apple Wallet says "Hold Near Reader".
- The police officer (or bar bouncer, etc.) holds their NFC scanner up next to your iPhone, it connects, and your iPhone lists what information will be transmitted and asks you to double-click again to send that information (at a bar, it'd just be your photo, and verification that you're over 21; for the police, it'd be all the details on your physical drivers license).
- You double-click to confirm (with another FaceID verification), and your iPhone sends the specified information.
All without the officer ever touching your iPhone. My understanding is that, in many (most? all?) places, the laws are written such that they
cannot touch your phone, much less take it away.
By the way, you can verify all of the above, about how Apple Wallet works, yourself: double-click and let FaceID authenticate you, then put your thumb over the camera (so FaceID can't authenticate again - this replicates the circumstances an officer would be in if they grabbed your phone), and try to see what other information you can access
without letting the phone re-authenticate via FaceID. Good luck.
Nowhere in this process are you "handing your unlocked phone" to anyone. If the officer breaks the law and grabs your iPhone out of your hands, they can... scroll through your list of credit cards and loyalty cards. They can't make any use of your credit cards - that'd require FaceID again - but maybe they can find your loyalty card number for Starbucks. That's it. No access to
any of your other phone data.
So either stop repeating "you shouldn't hand your unlocked phone to a police officer" as if it has any relevance to the topic of digital drivers licenses, or start including all the other unrelated warnings along with that one, starting with "you shouldn't punch police officers at traffic stops, or hand them large bags of drugs, or ram their police cars". Because those are
also things that you definitely shouldn't do, that
also have nothing to do with digital drivers licenses.