Joe Rossignol, writing for MacRumors:
Norwegian police will force a 27-year-old man accused of drug possession to unlock his iPhone with Touch ID, according to local website Bergensavisen [Google Translate]. The police believe the confiscated smartphone may contain evidence about where he obtained the illegal substance.
And:
It remains unclear if Norwegian police are aware that Touch ID requires a passcode as supplemental verification after 48 hours of disuse, a restart, or three failed fingerprint entry attempts. The accused was arrested on January 25, so it may be impossible for authorities to unlock his iPhone with Touch ID without taking additional measures.
In the U.S., a Virginia court ruled that fingerprints, unlike passwords and passcodes, are not protected by the Fifth Amendment. In his ruling, Judge Steven C. Frucci opined that “giving police a fingerprint is akin to providing a DNA or handwriting sample or an actual key,” which is permitted under federal law.
Interesting all the way around. Even if the Norwegian courts were too slow to be effective in this case, they’ve now established a precedent.
More interesting is the issue of police in the US being able to force you to use your finger to unlock your phone.
[H/T David Sobsey]
The question is whether the court can compel a person to unlock a phone for discovery of evidence.
Does the warrant front this power?
This is why Apple needs to add a poison finger function, where if I were to use, say, my left ring finger, it’d lock the phone down completely.
Or completely and securely wipe it all — although flash memory can be difficult in that regard.
So far, Apple’s stance on encryption has used the (ethical) argument, “If you make a back door for the good guys, then the bad guys can use it too.” What you’re hoping for is for Apple to be complicit in your hiding illegal activity using encryption. Got it.
The constitution protects unreasonable search and seizure. It does not (and was never intended to) protect against all forms of search & seizure, even legal ones. As TWF’s comment shows, there’s lots of people who think Apple is there to help them hide illegal activity from the law. I hope they’re wrong.
Actually, it’s asking for a way to completely lock away everything if anyone, not just law enforcement, tried to compel me to give them all my stuff. I don’t see anything wrong with that. Using your statement, you’d hold the furnace company liable because someone threw all their papers into it when the police came to the door with a warrant.
If we choose to use Apple’s encryption to hide things from the law, that is on us, not Apple. Personally, I’m not so naive as to think law enforcement couldn’t get into it if they really wanted to (I think their protestations are because it is very difficult — not because it is impossible), but I prefer Apple’s default of encryption with no back doors to keep out as much riffraff as possible. If it’s wrong to want to keep the casual and mostly-casual bad guy out of my stuff, then lock me the hell up.