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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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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Tell a man there are 300 billion stars in the universe and he'll believe you.
Tell him a bench has wet paint on it and he'll have to touch to be sure.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 04 2014, @04:16PM
I don't see how this can pass the 4th ammendment. The very first thing on the list of things to be secure in is "their persons." If they got a warrant, that would be one thing. Taking a fingerprint or a DNA sample in order to record/search in their own database is a narrowly defined purpose, but forcing someone to apply their fingerprint to use on a non-police computer system is a major expansion. The judge seems to be doing that autistic thing where they ignore the intent of why fingerprints are collected and saying well since you can collect them for one narrow purpose it is OK to use them for any purpose because once you've got them it is a free-for-all.
(Score: 2) by hubie on Tuesday November 04 2014, @04:20PM
Autistic thing???
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 04 2014, @04:31PM
Yes. One of the characteristics of autism is a lack of understanding nuance when dealing with people.
(Score: 3, Informative) by CRCulver on Tuesday November 04 2014, @05:20PM
It has been some months now since a Supreme Court ruling that police need a warrant to search cell phones. Please try to keep up. This particular ruling concerns compelling defendents to provide their fingerprints in order to unlock a phone that police have already decided to search on the basis of a warrant.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 04 2014, @07:58PM
Seems ambiguous to me. The police got themselves a warrant to search the phone, they did not get a warrant to force the defendant to unlock it for them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 04 2014, @10:07PM
Please clarify. Does a warrant compel compliance?
If the police have a warrant to search your house are you required to give them the keys? How about to your safe?