Titillating headline, but read on:
Authorities in Florida showed up to a funeral home and tried to unlock a dead man’s cell phone using his finger.
And:
Largo Police Lt. Randall Chaney told the Tampa Bay Times that the detectives were trying to gain access to and protect data relevant to their investigation into Phillip’s death, as well as another investigation Phillip was involved in related to drugs.
And:
There is no expectation of privacy after a person passes away, so the move to access the iPhone by detectives was legal, but not necessarily appropriate or ethical, Charles Rose, a professor at Stetson University College of Law, told the Tampa Bay Times.
“While the deceased person doesn’t have a vested interest in the remains of their body, the family sure does, so it really doesn’t pass the smell test,” he told the newspaper. Even though a deceased person can no longer claim their property for themselves under their Fourth Amendment rights, whoever inherits the property at stake, such as family, can exercise those rights, he said.
I’ve long wondered about the legality of physically forcing someone to unlock their iPhone using their finger or their face. Does that legal status change when someone dies?
And what about FaceID? Will it work on a dead person whose eyes are open? Can attention detection tell if someone is dead?
UPDATE: Couple of good comments from JLMoran. Sounds like neither TouchID nor FaceID will work on a dead person, at least not without some extra trickery.
Remember there are multiple elements to FaceID, one of which is an infrared map of your face in addition to the 3D map from the dot scatter sensor. Since a dead person no longer emits any heat, FaceID will reject the scan as there’s no IR map available, even if the eyelids were somehow opened and made to stay open to try and trick attention awareness.
I also notice this article doesn’t say whether the attempt to unlock with the deceased individual’s finger actually worked, only that they *tried* to unlock it this way. I’m assuming it didn’t work, as it was documented back when it first came out that TouchID’s capacitive sensor requires an active (bio)electric field from the finger making the contact in order for it to work correctly. You’d think the police station might have looked into that before going into the funeral home and upsetting the deceased’s family.
Remember that we don’t have an absolute right against search. So if due process happens and you’re required to allow search, technology shouldn’t enable you to prevent legitimate searches.