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from the something-you-have,-something-you-are,-something-you-know dept.
FBI is quietly waging a different encryption battle in a Los Angeles courtroom. The authorities obtained a search warrant compelling the girlfriend of an alleged Armenian gang member to press her finger against an iPhone that had been seized from a Glendale home. The phone uses Apple's fingerprint identification system for unlocking. It's a rare case were prosecutors have demanded a person provide a fingerprint to unlock a computer, but experts expect such cases to become more common.
In a Circuit Court decision in Virginia 2014, the judge ruled that a criminal defendant cannot use Fifth Amendment protections to safeguard a phone that is locked using his or her fingerprint. According to Judge Steven C. Fucci, a criminal defendant can't be compelled to hand over a passcode to police officers for the purpose of unlocking a cellular device, law enforcement officials can compel a defendant to give up a fingerprint. The Fifth Amendment states that "no person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself," which protects memorized information like passwords and passcodes, but it doesn't protect fingerprints in the eyes of the law. Frucci said that "giving police a fingerprint is akin to providing a DNA or handwriting sample or an actual key, which the law permits. A passcode, though, requires the defendant to divulge knowledge, which the law protects against.
In other words fingerprints are bad security. On the other hand... maybe some fingers like 9 out of 10, instead can trigger a silent self-destruct?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 03 2016, @08:51PM
The better solution is to simply "forget, but try" enough times that it gets wiped naturally through the inbuilt anti-brute-force protections.
However, I believe that if you are under duress, and the police *force* you to do something which results in the destruction of data, then because there was no free will involved, only obeying direct orders from an authority asserting dominance over you. that authority is the one that caused the destruction, not you.
The 5th needs bolstering, certainly.