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Florida Court Says Suspected Voyeur Must Reveal His iPhone Passcode To Police (bbc.com)
A Florida appeals court has reversed a decision by a previous judge and ruled that a suspected voyeur can be made to reveal his iPhone passcode to police. "The defendant was arrested after a woman out shopping saw a man crouch down and aim what she believed was a smartphone under her skirt," reports BBC: Store CCTV captured footage of a man crouched down, holding an illuminated device and moving it towards the victim's skirt, according to court documents published by news site Courthouse News. Aaron Stahl was identified by law enforcement officers who reviewed the footage, according to court documents. After his arrest, Mr Stahl initially agreed to allow officers to search his iPhone 5, which he told them was at his home. However, once it had been retrieved by police - but before he had revealed his passcode - he withdrew consent to the search. The trial court had decided that Mr Stahl could be protected by the Fifth Amendment, which is designed to prevent self-incrimination. However, Judge Anthony Black's formal opinion to the court quashed the decision. Judge Black referred to a famous Supreme Court case, Doe v US 1988, in which Justice John Paul Stevens wrote that a defendant could be made to surrender a key to a strongbox containing incriminating documents but they could not "be compelled to reveal the combination to his wall safe." "We question whether identifying the key which will open the strongbox - such that the key is surrendered - is, in fact, distinct from telling an officer the combination," wrote Judge Black. "More importantly, we question the continuing viability of any distinction as technology advances."
Fifth amendment violation. This judge isn't qualified to practice law in the United States.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
This is what you get for deciding that the Constitution is a "living document", and that a judge's opinion can be substituted for the plain wording of the 5th Amendment.
The Judge didn't refer to the legal precedent in the 1988 case, he merely referred to the 1988 case and then *disagreed* with the precedent set down in that case by saying he saw no distinction between identifying a key or identifying a combination - the combination he refers to is the combination of the safe in the 1988 case, not the passcode to the iPhone. He then equates the passcode to the combination.
Legal precedent can be overturned, its not set in stone forever more, and thats what this Judge is trying to do here - overturn the precedent in the 1988 case by saying there is no longer a distinction between the physical key and the ephemeral combination.
So you're saying that the supreme court can make a ruling that is on point in a specific matter, and sometime later an appeals court judge can decide that legal precedent might be overturned, and we should ask the supreme court once again "is this still your opinion"?
Here I thought that the supreme court was the court of final appeal!
And furthermore, it takes on the order of $2 million to mount a supreme court challenge, so this appeals court judge effectively just dropped a bill for that amount that the defendant *has* to pay, in order to stay out of jail. The defence relied on a supreme court decision, but it turns out that in general we can no longer do this.
And finally, suppose the defendant simply says "I forgot the passcode - it's been so long, and I haven't typed it in, that it's just escaped my memory". The judge can disbelieve the defendant and put him in contempt of court, but otherwise there's basically no crime that the defendant can be charged with for making this statement.