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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 05 2014, @04:40PM
I don't know what kind of places you talk about, what the kind I know fall in two types: The ones you could consider 'friendly' and so low risk and the ones where if you leave your phone unattended you can forget about getting it again.