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According to The Virginian-Pilot, Judge Steven Frucci ruled that making suspects provide their passwords so police can snoop through their phones is a violation of the Fifth Amendment because it would force suspects to incriminate themselves. But in the same ruling, the presiding judge decided that demanding suspects to provide their fingerprints to unlock a TouchID phone is constitutional because it’s similar to compelling DNA, handwriting or an actual key—all of which the law allows.
Note that this ruling only applies in one Circuit in Virginia, but the logic would seem to apply. So, use passwords/passcodes on your iDevices!
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Police can Compel Fingerprint Unlocking of Phones - in Virginia
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(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday November 06 2014, @12:47PM
That's actually an interesting question. If you comply with their orders and what they order causes the phone to be wiped, can you really call that *willful* destruction?
Of course, that depends on if they say 'unlock your phone' or 'swipe your finger'; or if you can get the judge to buy a story of 'I was under a lot of stress and accidentally swiped wrong'...
(Score: 1) by monster on Thursday November 06 2014, @03:48PM
IMHO, if they can show that the real intention for the mechanism is indeed to wipe the data, it's still willful destruction, even if the police didn't say the "correct" words. Kind of like putting a shotgun in a mount, tieing a cord to the trigger and to the pommel of your door, then arguing that since it was the person who tried to open it who made the shot, you should be clear of manslaughter charges.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Thursday November 06 2014, @04:30PM
Yeah, that probably is how they'd try to prosecute at least. But there's a couple issues with your analogy. First, any reasonable person looking at the shotgun booby-trap would conclude that the only possible intention was to kill someone. If you set all that up, you wanted *someone* dead. Compare it to a magician -- the guy who helps Houdini put on the handcuffs doesn't get charged with murder if Houdini dies unless they can prove he did something directly malicious. Intent matters. With the phone wiping, there are other immediately obvious reasons you might install that software, and there are other immediately obvious reasons you might swipe the wrong finger. Which, at least theoretically, should mean that they have to prove you did it specifically intending to destroy evidence. And that's damn near impossible to do.
Ultimately, if you're rich and can afford a good lawyer, I think you could escape charges for doing that. If you do it and you've got a public defender, you're going to prison.