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The Government Wants Your Fingerprint To Unlock Phones (dailygazette.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the hand-over-the-evidence dept.

schwit1 quotes this report from the Daily Gazette: "As the world watched the FBI spar with Apple this winter in an attempt to hack into a San Bernardino shooter's iPhone, federal officials were quietly waging a different encryption battle in a Los Angeles courtroom. There, authorities obtained a search warrant compelling the girlfriend of an alleged Armenian gang member to press her finger against an iPhone that had been seized from a Glendale home. The phone contained Apple's fingerprint identification system for unlocking, and prosecutors wanted access to the data inside it.

It marked a rare time that prosecutors have demanded a person provide a fingerprint to open a computer, but experts expect such cases to become more common as cracking digital security becomes a larger part of law enforcement work. The Glendale case and others like it are forcing courts to address a basic question: How far can the government go to obtain biometric markers such as fingerprints and hair?"

5 of 224 comments (clear)

  1. Duress print by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    New option: set a finger to use which will cause the device to wipe. (I can think of an appropriate digit to use).

    1. Re: Duress print by AK+Marc · · Score: 5, Informative

      Converting the data to an unusable form would be treated like shredding, which is illegal, and well tested to be illegal, if you do so after you know the material shredded was needed for an investigation or lawsuit.

      --
      Learn to love Alaska
  2. Re:How far can the (US) government go? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    I think you have a bit of a misinterpretation of the fifth amendment.

    The explicit text related to self-incrimination is:

    "...nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself; ..."

    which is generally interpreted as:

    "The Fifth Amendment protects criminal defendants from having to testify if they may incriminate themselves through the testimony. A witness may 'plead the Fifth' and not answer if the witness believes answering the question may be self-incriminatory."

    So, the fifth amendment specifically applies to testimony.

    So while you can't be compelled to provide authorities with your decryption key for instance, we have recently seen here that you can be ordered to perform the decryption itself and be held in contempt of court for not doing so.

  3. Re:Public Service Announcement by dgatwood · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The government can just wait for your prints to regrow (while you are held in custody)

    That approach won't work. The device won't take fingerprints after 48 hours. In fact, if the person simply refuses to submit to use of their fingers to unlock the device, they might get held in contempt, but after 48 hours, they can submit to the use of their fingers, and they're no longer in contempt, but it won't be of any value to the government.

    --

    Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.

  4. Sigh by ledow · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Fingerprints are not passwords. If you use them that way, you're an idiot.

    At best, fingerprints are shortcuts for your USERNAME. You can use them in systems like that - school library and dining hall systems are perfect, you're not interested in "security", you're just interested in determining the correct child to a certain degree of accuracy quickly.

    Your password should still be something that only you know.

    People using fingerprints for passwords are deliberately making their machines less secure.