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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."
BS the technology makes the wording irrelevant.
Stevens point was that if there's a key the police can find, they're entitled to use it. That includes finding the passcode on a sticky note or getting Apple to unlock the phone.
They are NOT allowed to compel a suspect to regurgitate words locked in his head... EVER... TECHNOLOGICAL REASONS BE DAMNED.
The Florida Supreme Court justices should be disbarred for such flimsy rationale.
You *DO* have the right to take photographs in public (at least, in the United States). But the defendant has an incorrect interpretation of this right.
The right to take photographs of individuals in public, from a public location, does not extend to situations in which the subject has a reasonable expectation of privacy. This means that "upskirt" photographs, or similar covert attempts to photograph people in a way that exposes that which is not visible under normal circumstances, is not a protected right. The basic reasoning is that by choosing to wear clothing that obscures your body in public, you have a reasonable expectation of privacy that no one is going to take photos from a point of view that would reveal what is under those clothes.
so if my lockscreen is an animation of a combo lock that you drag back and forth to enter the unlock code...
Would that make this judge's head explode?
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or it didn't happen.
Yes, you read it the same way I did. The appeals court judge in this case said he failed to see the distinction and disagreed with the earlier supreme court ruling.
And the Supremes were right and this judge wrong.
The portion of the Fifth that protects against self-incrimination is the US Constitution's answer to "Who will guard the guardians?" It's a practical measure to oppose torturing confessions out of people.
It's difficult to get a cop to bust another cop for torturing a suspect to force inforation out of him. But if forcing information out of a suspect means everything "tainted" by what he said is thrown out as evidence, torturing a suspect becomes, not just useless, but counter-productive. This is far more effective at reducing the use of rubber hoses, bright lights, kidney punches, and sleep deprivation on accused criminals that just a prohibition on doing so. (For starters, it's not good for career advancement if you blow a big case by getting all the evidence thrown out, including that which WASN'T, but MIGHT HAVE BEEN, developed from what the accused had said.)
"The judge says tell us the password." "I won't." What "or else" is next? It's pretty clear that forcing the password out of someone who doesn't want to turn it over is extracting info that might produce evidence to use against him. Fifth Amendment clear and simple.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
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.