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It's unconstitutional for cops to force phone unlocking, court rules:
Indiana's Supreme Court has ruled that the Fifth Amendment allows a woman accused of stalking to refuse to unlock her iPhone. The court held that the Fifth Amendment's rule against self-incrimination protected Katelin Seo from giving the police access to potentially incriminating data on her phone.
The courts are divided on how to apply the Fifth Amendment in this kind of case. Earlier this year, a Philadelphia man was released from jail after four years of being held in contempt in connection with a child-pornography case. A federal appeals court rejected his argument that the Fifth Amendment gave him the right to refuse to unlock hard drives found in his possession. A Vermont federal court reached the same conclusion in 2009—as did a Colorado federal court in 2012, a Virginia state court in 2014, and the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in 2014.
But other courts in Florida, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania have reached the opposite conclusion, holding that forcing people to provide computer or smartphone passwords would violate the Fifth Amendment.
Lower courts are divided about this issue because the relevant Supreme Court precedents all predate the smartphone era. To understand the two competing theories, it's helpful to analogize the situation to a pre-digital technology.
There's much more to the matter than just the excerpt shown here -- it's well worth reading the entire article so as to not argue from ignorance.
(Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Thursday June 25 2020, @06:04AM (5 children)
The issues and the history, through the eyes of someone who thinks in legal terms. It's an interesting alternate perspective.
https://reason.com/2020/06/24/indiana-supreme-court-creates-a-clear-split-on-compelled-decryption-and-the-fifth-amendment/ [reason.com]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2020, @04:51PM (4 children)
So much blablabla when the answer is obvious. Check the gender of the people involved.
Men are all rapists and pedophiles who merely have yet to be caught in the act. Thus the forgone conclusion doctrine applies. This is also why we simply expel them from college upon a mere unfounded accusation by a third party.
Well, one man behind bars or fucked out of all his credits and still on the hook for a $20k student loan he can't discharge through bankruptcy is less competition for the Real Men, those upstanding Christian men who would never defile a woman's honor.
A woman, though? How can a woman possibly stalk a guy? Women are amazing, they're pretty, they're desirable, and they're so amazing, up there on their pedestals, so wonderful, so perfect, so angelic. Or as the feminists put it, they're "superior beings."
So of course a woman has a fifth amendment right to not unlock her phone. It's not a forgone conclusion. In fact, it's a forgone conclusion that she cannot possibly be guilty. This guy is a damned incel for rejecting her affection! He's the one we should be throwing the book at instead!
Shirely, Aristarchus will agree with my conclusions.
(Score: 3, Touché) by PartTimeZombie on Thursday June 25 2020, @10:49PM (3 children)
It must be awful to live in constant fear of half the population.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday June 25 2020, @11:08PM (1 child)
Men are getting canceled this week for flirting with women outside of work. Or just straight up being hit with false accusations.
Worst of all, male feminist allies are finding out that years of estrogen-fueled virtue signaling can't save them from being destroyed. But what does all this have to do with unlocking phones?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2020, @12:55AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 26 2020, @12:49AM
Ask any woman. She'll tell you what that's like.