appealtoreason has covered a lot of points I'd make here. Purses get stolen, that idea is no better or worse than ICE. People get separated from their bags, jackets, and wallets where sometimes they don't get separated from their phones (I know a lot of men who keep their wallet in their briefcase but their phone on their belt).
The point of ICE is not 'this is the only way and the only thing we will use', it's to optimize the chances of John Doe being identified or John Doe's family finding out where he is (since we're not just talking about deaths here, but memory loss, people in comas in hospital, etc). It's one tool of many.
The biggest potential for abuse that I can see is that someone finds a lost phone and prank-calls. Well, that happens already (to Julia Sawahla, most notably). Better prank-calling someone's partner than their 80 year old Mum who might keel over from shock before the phone's owner checks in. And perhaps this will encourage more people to find out their phone's IMEI so that lost phones can be disabled quickly.
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The point of ICE is not 'this is the only way and the only thing we will use', it's to optimize the chances of John Doe being identified or John Doe's family finding out where he is (since we're not just talking about deaths here, but memory loss, people in comas in hospital, etc). It's one tool of many.
The biggest potential for abuse that I can see is that someone finds a lost phone and prank-calls. Well, that happens already (to Julia Sawahla, most notably). Better prank-calling someone's partner than their 80 year old Mum who might keel over from shock before the phone's owner checks in. And perhaps this will encourage more people to find out their phone's IMEI so that lost phones can be disabled quickly.