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Suspect Required To Unlock iPhone Using Touch ID in Second Federal Case (9to5mac.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report on 9to5Mac: A second federal judge has ruled that a suspect can be compelled to unlock their iPhone using their fingerprint in order to give investigators access to data which can be used as evidence against them. The first time this ever happened in a federal case was back in May, following a District Court ruling in 2014. The legal position of forcing suspects to use their fingerprints to unlock devices won't be known with certainty until a case reaches the U.S. Supreme Court, but lower court rulings so far appear to establish a precedent which is at odds with that concerning passcodes. Most constitutional experts appear to believe that the Fifth Amendment prevents a suspect from being compelled to reveal a password or passcode, as this would amount to forced self-incrimination -- though even this isn't certain. Fingerprints, in contrast, have traditionally been viewed as 'real or physical evidence,' meaning that police are entitled to take them without permission.Ars Technica has more details.
Was he compelled to actually put his finger on the phone, or was he just compelled to surrender his fingerprints? TFA is not precisely clear about that. If it's the former then that's incontrovertibly a violation of the Fifth Amendment. If it's the latter then it's just routine--he's going to leave a trace somewhere eventually.
In either case, the moral of the story is, don't use your biometrics to lock your phone.
I guess you'll be held in contempt of court until you remember the password. Duration: indefinite.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
If you're not doing illegal stuff on your phone, you don't have to worry.
That works, until the government decides that your particular activity is a threat to government and makes it illegal. So no, you're incorrect, you should worry about what your government can do to you.
My particular solution would be to have a deadman's switch that erases the phone when using any finger but the one correct one. Or better yet, disable the Finger Prints from your phone, and use a proper PIN, which they cannot force you to divulge.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
your fingerprints aren't a testimony against yourself. Read the damn thing. "nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself."
Your fingerprints absolutely can be evidence against you. That's not even a question. The police have a long established right to take your fingerprints when you are arrested and to compare them with gathered evidence.
That said I have a hard time reconciling this with the right against self incrimination in the Constitution. In principle I feel a biometric pass code should be legally no different than a memorized one. Either way you are being forced to potentially incriminate yourself. But I suspect that the legal system will rule that they are different and so if you want your phone to be secure against search and seizure you must avoid biometric pass codes unfortunately. The problem here is that they are not comparing your fingerprints against evidence they have found. They are in effect forcing you to open a lock on their behalf. I don't have a problem with them having the right to search but I don't see why the target of the investigation should be forced to aid in that search. If they can break down a door to do a search (with a warrant) then have that right but I don't see why I should have to hand over the key to the house so to speak.
A lot of people are confused by what self-incrimination means. Self-incrimination is forcing someone to testify (testimonial obligation), be a witness against their own interest/side in a criminal action, or generally be forced to say/admit anything that might be used against them unwittingly later as part of a prosecution. The right to non self-incrimination does not mean you are immune from having evidence produced that incriminates you!
The key thing is that it is a right to not testify, or be a witness, which is the act of saying or stating something. If a person can be compelled to produce his/her fingerprints (something which in itself is not a testimonial act), then just because that unlocks something that incriminates the person does not mean they have been self-incriminated.
Moral of the story is Don't leave evidence on your phone. Or anywhere else for that matter.
Idiotic statement. Sometimes what isn't actually evidence of anything can be used against you. Just because you have nothing to hide does NOT mean you have nothing to fear.
If you need an explanation why watch this video.
Destruction of evidence is a crime (current political figures aside) which will get you sent to jail.
May I suggest that it's a stupid idea to knowingly destroy evidence if you are the subject of a criminal investigation (or a civil lawsuit for that matter)? Now I guess if you know you are guilty, it might be worth the risk to you, but in general it's going to be a bad idea..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
This is why biometric identification should be used as a username, never a password.
Bite off your fingertips and eat 'em!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Destruction of evidence is a crime (current political figures aside) which will get you sent to jail.
May I suggest that it's a stupid idea to knowingly destroy evidence if you are the subject of a criminal investigation (or a civil lawsuit for that matter)? Now I guess if you know you are guilty, it might be worth the risk to you, but in general it's going to be a bad idea..
But you are under no obligation to indicate which finger correctly unlocks the phone. As long as you comply with the court order "place index finger on fingerprint sensor", you don't have to tell them that doing so will erase the phone.
Current really cheap phone sensors will work with a 2D printed photocopy of the fingerprint, slightly less cheap sensors are capacitive and but should still work with a 2D print using, say, capacitive ink (would the standard magnetic toner used to print official bank cheques work here?). For the more complex sensors (I used to work at a company that manufactured this type, but don't know of any used in phones) even using the suspect's real finger wouldn't work if it happened to be cut off of the suspect... we were reading the EM field of the flowing blood capillaries behind the fingerprint itself. This is common with more security oriented sensors, and while we were able to shrink them enough to operate fine in a phone, they aren't the sub $5 cost that most phone sensors seem to have budgeted. Summing up: A capacitive 3D print should work, but overkill. 2D prints will definitely work, but capacitant sensors makes that less trivial than it used to be. Good sensors are tough as hell to spoof because EM is tougher than optical to replicate in fingerprint format.
And this is yet another reason to think that instead of paying too much attention to "oh shiny".
I was against them as "passwords" due to - you can't change them if you're hacked.
I guess Apple isn't magic fairy dust after all...oh, wait.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!