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Judge Rules Against Forced Fingerprinting (thestack.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Stack: A federal judge in Chicago has ruled against a government request which would require forced fingerprinting of private citizens in order to open a secure, personal phone or tablet. In the ruling, the judge stated that while fingerprints in and of themselves are not protected, the government's method of obtaining the fingerprints would violate the Fourth and Fifth amendments. The government's request was given as part of a search warrant related to a child pornography ring. The court ruled that the government could seize devices, but that it could not compel people physically present at the time of seizure to provide their fingerprints "onto the Touch ID sensor of any Apple iPhone, iPad, or other Apple brand device in order to gain access to the contents of any such device." The report mentions that the ruling was based on three separate arguments. "The first was that the boilerplate language used in the request was dated, and did not, for example, address vulnerabilities associated with wireless services. Second, the court said that the context in which the fingerprints were intended to be gathered may violate the Fourth Amendment search and seizure rights of the building residents and their visitors, all of whom would have been compelled to provide their fingerprints to open their secure devices. Finally, the court noted that historically the Fifth Amendment, which protects against self-incrimination, does not allow a person to circumvent the fingerprinting process." You can read more about the ruling via Ars Technica.
Also, doesn't this amount to forcing people to provide evidence that can potentially incriminate them?
Don't read this story as a ruling against the police / government being allowed to compel individuals suspected of criminal activity to be forced to give fingerprints. That is not what's at issue here, and the decision doesn't affect that.
This story is that the wholesale screening of individuals that the police have no otherwise suspicion of a crime, shotgun style, is being ruled against. Just like the case several years ago when police sought to have an entire small town's male population give DNA samples to match some evidence they had of a sex crime. The judge in this case tossed out the willy nilly use of police power to compel people wholly unrelated to the issue, not under suspicion at all, from having to give evidence.
When you're suspected of something specifically, you can definitely still be compelled. Just like being compelled to give a breathalyzer, or DNA when a court orders you to.
But as a more practical matter anyway, 10 tries of different people's fingerprints, and the phone will be wiped regardless... so there's a limit to how useful the technique would've been to begin with.
Yea, but they "must not abridge" that right you know...
Interesting how we have justified away our constitutional rights in the last few decades isn't it? For the "good of all" we now give up more and more freedom and the courts seem willing to help it happen in the name of social justice, political correctness or even the judge's personal feelings...
(Yes, I'm pointing at the 9th Circuit.... You folks need to swallow a huge does of "what does the law say" and stop with this "but it's mean if you do that" stuff.)
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I think the difference is between their being allowed to sample your fingerprint and their being allowed to force you to do something specific your fingerprint.
If they take your fingerprint then they have to figure out how to turn that fingerprint into a finger again in order to then use it.
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Why would you assume the legal system is supposed to be consistent?
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"give up more and more freedom and the courts seem willing to help it happen in the name of social justice, political correctness or even the judge's personal feelings... "
I think the judgment in the article refutes your opinion. Nobody has giving up or lost any of their constitutional rights. Even child pornographers still have their rights. If the suspects in this case are guilty the law enforcement agencies will just have to find and rely on other evidence to prosecute the offenders. If that isn't possible then the suspected child pornographer is free to go on their merry way. Maybe some more evidence will be found after their next offense.
and the judge saw right through it. What worries me is if we keep putting folks like Trump in charge of the Executive and he stacks the courts with folks who will ignore the rule of law. They're already forming a new court to get around the more liberal ones that run out of California...
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Yes, I read the judgement and the court wrote that there is a fifth amendment concern. Specifically, the judge pointed to another major ruling recently that by unlocking a phone via a password (or fingerprint), the person is effectively testifying that it is their phone, under their control, and they can decrypt and encrypt it.
Also, the application for the warrant was deficient on traditional fourth amendment grounds, specificity of what and who would be searched, and what the police expected to find where. They wanted to use the fingers of everyone present at the house (resident or *visitor*) to search every electronic device in the house. So a delivery man dropping off a couch at the time would have his phone searched.
The judge indicated that the police needed to be more specific. Something like "we want to search Bob Smith's Galaxy S5 for a file called 12yroldfuck.mpg because we believe he downloaded that file to that phone on February 12th, based on [evidence]." That would solve both the 4th amendment specificity issue and the 5th amendment issue - if the police already know that the Galaxy S5 is Bob's, the act of him unlocking it doesn't provide new, testimonial information.
I think what the summary was trying to hint at is that the ruling doesn't prohibit the normal process of taking fingerprints incident to arrest.
The rational and intelligent states of Illinois, California, and New York are doing what they can to limit the federal insanity. Please give them whatever support you can.
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my iPhone does that at 10 failed attempts. Trust me, 3 is too low.
What this is really about: Can the government demand that you take some action? It doesn't matter whether this is a matter of seconds, hours, or months: Are you the government's slave, to command as it wishes?
If it were just about fingerprints, then the government could collect your fingerprint from something you touched, reproduce it on an artificial fingertip, and unlock the phone*. There is nothing at all stopping them from doing this, but that's not the precedent that they want to set.
*This isn't even particularly difficult. A German computer magazine (c't) did a demo of this back in 2004, using glue and other ordinary household stuff. No link, because the article is no longer online, but a google search turns up lots of similar results.
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In what way is giving away some "freedoms" you never really needed anyway for the good of the community a bad thing? Society is more important than individuals, we Europeans know that.
A society that doesn't protect "unnecessary" individual freedom is not one worth living in. There are two things to note here. First, it's easy to define any sort of freedom as unnecessary. North Korea has done so, for example. Similarly, the idea of primacy of society has justified all sorts of abuses against people by powerful parties who can convenient align the interests of society to fulfill their own interests.
Second, it is better to black list proven harmful action and behavior (I would go for a much more stringent sort of harm, substantial harm against innocent parties who aren't "coming to the nuisance" or otherwise engaging in behavior that deliberately and expectedly exposes themselves to the harm by choice) rather than white list proven harmless or necessary action and behavior. I shouldn't have to prove to society or government that my desired actions are necessary to me. It simply shouldn't be the business of society or government to make that determination, particular since neither has ever shown any competence or impartiality in doing so.
Actually the court was a balanced 4-4 with Kennedy swinging back and forth based on the case merits. Currently it's a 4-4ish tie but again Kennedy is likely to swing his vote based on the topic of the case. On social issues he's usually going to side with the left side of the court. On law enforcement type issues he leans to the right.
But don't let facts get in the way of your opinions.
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How is this different than looking at my face?
Do you need a warrant to take my picture?
That can be incriminating. I just don't get it.
Sure, if you have my prints, you could plant them at a crime scene. (Difficulty level = High).
But if you have my photo, you can fabricate "witnesses" that say I did something. (Difficulty level = Low).
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Besides, here's what I was actually replying to:
If only a very small number of arrested suspects plead not guilty and have their case go the a jury trial then the cop is doing quite well are they not?
Also plenty of people are arrested on suspicion and released without ever going to trial after questioning or evidence shows that they are not guilty - nothing wrong with that, it's a process not instant magic.
To sum up the analogy is really pretty stupid when you think about it. The complaint about the reality it's being compared to probably even more so. Emotive bullshit being applied to attempt to smear a very conservative error checking system that is working precisely as designed.
I don't think you get what I'm saying. Which is OK because it really was off topic.
I believe our courts have, in some cases, invented rights where none really exist and have ignored rights that ARE enumerated in our constitution. The 10th amendment is the most trampled with the 2nd, 4th and 5th often abridged as well. This should NOT be. Courts should be limited to interpreting the law, not MAKING law though their decisions. They will sometimes be called on to resolve conflicts in existing law and produce precedent, but that should not establish a de facto law or invent rights that here to fore didn't exist.
Unfortunately, that's not how most people see the courts. The courts are now a political tool. See any discussion of the Heller decision by Mrs. Clinton during the last debate or much of the "Citizen United" decision for examples of what I mean. This stuff should NOT be part of a political campaign and only is because the courts have allowed themselves to make decisions based on politics in the past. Which is my point. This should not be so.
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"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
Seems like the founder already took care of this one. Many rights exist that are not specifically enumerated in the constitution and the courts are free to find those right violated. Unfortunately strict originalists like Scalia forget about the Ninth Amendment when they want to go back to what "The drafters of the Constitution wrote down" as their primary source for rulings. The Ninth basically says there is a lot of rights that we the founders haven't written down but that doesn't mean they don't exist.
Disney and Universal collect your fingerprints and no one ever objects to it.
Yes, but they're not saved. They're used to create a hash number to tie that hash to a ticket so you can't share the ticket. The hashes are deleted after 30 days, according to their privacy policy.
Oh, looks like I hit a nerve.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.