Slashdot Mirror
Judge Jails Defendent For Failing To Unlock Phones (fox13news.com)
devoid42 writes: In a Tampa courtroom, Judge Gregory Holder held William Montanez in contempt of court for failure to unlock a mobile device. What led to this was a frightening slippery slope that threatens our Fourth Amendment rights to the core. Montanez was stopped for failing to yield properly. After being pulled over, the officer asked to search his car; Montanez refused, so the officer held him until a drug dog was brought in to give the officer enough probable cause to search the vehicle. They found a misdemeanor amount of marijuana, which they used to arrest Montenez, but they asked to search his two cellphones, which he also refused. They were able to secure a warrant for those as well, but Montenez claimed he had forgotten his password. The result: Montanez is being held in contempt of court and is serving a six-month jail sentence.
Wouldn't this be akin to a warrant for searching your house?
You can't really say "I lost my house keys"
Sure you can, but the cops will just break your door.
The same goes for your safe (if you have one): "Forgot" the combination? Out comes the big angle grinder.
The problem is that encryption works - they can't get past it by using brute force.
No sig today...
"I forgot" is a lame excuse. He should have said "I have no recollection of that".
The Constitution is supposed to be the highest law of the United States and should apply in every federal court. The GP is suggesting that lower courts are less open to hearing arguments that law enforcement has violated a defendant's Constitutional rights. He's suggesting that appellate courts are more open to considering those arguments. That's unfortunate, because the Constitution has supersedes any other law in federal courts.
With respect to state courts, portions of the Constitution should still apply. Although the Bill of Rights initially applied to just the federal government, the 14th amendment's due process clause allows for the Bill of Rights to be extended to apply to the states. When these rights are applied to the states, this is referred to as incorporation. For example, McDonald v. City of Chicago (2010) incorporated the second amendment right to keep and bear arms against the states.
With respect to the fourth and fifth amendment, all of the rights except indictment by a grand jury have been incorporated against the states. If you'd like more details, I refer you to Wikipedia's article on incorporation.
Why is one party allowed to drop charges without the other party's consent anyway?
https://www.dailydot.com/layer...
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
What if the cops find a safe in your house that they cannot open without destroying the contents. Could you be compelled to open it, or be held in contempt for failure to do so (in the USA)?
IANAL but my understanding is that they cannot force you to reveal information you reasonably believe might be used to incriminate you and that cannot be obtained in another way. This would include passwords or safe combinations. They can force you to provide biometric identifiers or produce physical objects like keys though. This falls under the 5th amendment to the Constitution against self incrimination. However they can confiscate the safe and if they have the ability to crack the safe without your assistance they can do so provided they have an appropriate warrant.
Here in the Netherlands, IIRC one cannot be compelled to assist in opening a locked safe except in cases where the search warrant is for a matter regarding taxes
That's a gigantic loophole right there which would be abused in a nanosecond if it were an option here. My guess is that it is abused in the Netherlands too but that's conjecture on my part.
However there are proposals to change the law to the effect that a suspect must assist in opening locked safes, unlocking locked phones, or decrypting files, in special cases like terrorism or (of course) child pornography.
So two problems with that. 1) How do you tell the difference between someone who has forgotten the password and someone pretending to forget? Kind of unfair to send someone to jail for being forgetful. 2) Do you seriously think that law enforcement won't simply use those exceptions to bypass any legal protections the accused might have?
Good fucking grief.