"Get a warrant, and you can have my phone"
The problem with this is, when you say that, they will usually take you up on that offer.
That means they'll impound your iPhone, and may also detain you while they go find a judge willing to sign a warrant based on your saying "no" as probable cause, or for even less "probable cause" than that.
Here's an idea, and I know it sounds crazy. Don't break the law.
Sounds simple enough.
It does, doesn't it? Too bad that doesn't always work. Generally, the police officers who get their jollies rifling through people's cell phones for no good reason are also the ones who like to stop people for no good reason, too.
And, even if one does break the law, it does not give police officers the right to send explicit text messages using your cell phone, or using your phone to e-mail themselves copies of any pictures you might have of your significant other for them to "investigate" later. Probably at home. In a darkened room. Perhaps even with their pants down. But evidently, things like the constitution and ethics rules in evidence handling won't stop all of them:
http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/new...ce-officer-accused-of-sexting-with-846785.php
this isn't to say EVERY police officer will do this sort of thing. But, human nature what it is, there are bad apples out there, and those are the ones that makes this worrisome even for law abiding citizens, like yourself.
My suggestion (and I'm not a lawyer, so take my suggestions with appropriate grains of salt) would be to make sure "Find My iPhone" is enabled. Hopefully, you might be able to use your one phone call at the station to instruct a friend with internet access on how to remotely wipe your phone before it gets scanned in the evidence room. Though it should be noted that any police department worth their salt knows to remove the SIM and store the iPhone in a
faraday bag until it can be scanned to prevent exactly that from happening.
What's supposed to happen with a secure wipe is, the encryption key for the file system is secure deleted, leaving behind gibberish (at least this is the case for the 3GS and later models).
It didn't matter, we tried both the 4 digit passcode as well as using a random password created by a PW Generator that used upper lower number and special character and would not allow dictionary words. Both times it pulled the data from the phone like the password wash't even there.
Was the "erase data" option enabled in Settings -> General -> Passcode Lock? This is supposed to erase all data on the device after 10 failed attempts at the passcode.
It would also be interesting to see what one of these devices (it was probably the
Cellebrite UFED that they were demoing) does with an iPhone that was ecure wiped. Cellebrite claims in their docs that they can even recover deleted data, but I'm wondering if that's limited to someone just deleting individual things like e-mails and texts, or if that claim extends to full wipes.