Courts predicted to side with law enforcement on fingerprint warrants for Apple's Touch ID

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Comments

  • Reply 21 of 32
    jbdragonjbdragon Posts: 2,312member
    Why not just refuse to use your fingerprint, be stuck in jail for a couple days and after the 48 hour period, freely give it. Oops, no longer works!. Hey you tried for them, oh well.
  • Reply 22 of 32
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,627member
    By the way this is unrelated but both important and funny! Just received an email from "AppleSupport" that reads:
    Support

    Dear Costumer

    Due to new terms of our user agreement, we inform you that we made recent updates in our website to ensure safety and high level of security while using our services check the link below to log in your account and follow the steps to update your account
  • Reply 23 of 32
    foggyhillfoggyhill Posts: 4,767member
    I got it! Apple could implement a full system wipe when the iPhone's owner attempts to "unlock" the iPhone with a particular fingerprint or combination of fingerprints. For example: law enforcement forces you to unlock your iPhone, you "comply" and place your middle finger over the Touch ID, which initiates a factory reset that cannot be stopped and the iPhone cannot be powered down until completion. A big FU to the law enforcement from yours truly.
    They don't really need a factory reset, they just have to throw away the file system key which takes a fraction of a second.
     That way you essentially cannot decrypt the phone anymore even if you had the passcode. I think that's how Apple does a wipe anyway. writing zeros and having something encrypted you can't decrypt is essentially the same from the user standpoint though one is much faster.
    One finger though is much too dangerous, maybe a sequence of at least 2 fingers would be better. Say your normal finger followed by a particular finger.
    Or if its a particular finger, make it a countdown to a wipe that can only be stopped with a passcode (say 2 minutes).

  • Reply 24 of 32
    Herbivore2Herbivore2 Posts: 367member
    Why not just disable the fingerprint touchID and simply enter in the passcode? Less convenient for certain, but my phone is set to erase after 10 failed attempts. Besides, there are a whole host of encrypted apps that one can store data into that also require pass codes/passphrases. 

    While researchers look for ways to compel one to verbally divulge secrets such as the use of the polygraph and also with the sophisticated scanning techniques being developed, digitized data is becoming inpenetrable. Makes one wonder when people are going to start using scopolamine to erase their own short term memory after entering data into a mobile device. 

    If the memory isn't there, there is nothing to extract, even under torture. And the data resides securely in a mobile device that cannot be broken into.

     It's going to make law enforcement more difficult, but it will ensure that the federal government will never be able to access my device. 
  • Reply 25 of 32
    If you're a criminal or planning to be one..don't use Touch ID.


    Given the profusion of idiotic laws in this country, it's highly likely that one already is a criminal, and just doesn't know it.

    I disabled Touch-ID for unlocking my phone just to avoid this situation altogether.  It's slightly less convenient, but a small price to pay for protecting my rights.

  • Reply 26 of 32
    gatorguygatorguy Posts: 24,627member
    If you're a criminal or planning to be one..don't use Touch ID.


    Given the profusion of idiotic laws in this country, it's highly likely that one already is a criminal, and just doesn't know it.

    I disabled Touch-ID for unlocking my phone just to avoid this situation altogether.  It's slightly less convenient, but a small price to pay for protecting my rights.

    IMHO unless you typically involve yourself in serious criminal activity I'd suspect the odds of being hit by lightning or being injured/killed in a terroristic attack are less than those of a US court forcing you to unlock your phone against your will. 

    Also FWIW in my few decades on the planet I've found those breaking the law with thefts, con games, violence, egregious trespassing and such are much less concerned with "our" rights and much more concerned with how those rights should be applied to them personally.

    I don't have a lot of sympathy for someone who would take from or purposefully harm me and then scream "I have rights!" when expected to answer for it. 
    edited May 2016
  • Reply 27 of 32
    mac_128mac_128 Posts: 3,454member
    icoco3 said:
    mac_128 said:
    ...
    i do like the poison pill option of making a custom password a wipe password. That way, if the law ever compels entering a password, a wipe password can be entered. Or, if using a hacked brute force method, there's a 50/50 chance they will wipe the phone before they unlock it.
    See post 6
    Depending on what they may find on the phone, destroying evidence may be the lesser charge, assuming they can prove the phone contained evidence at all, which would be hard to prove. 
  • Reply 28 of 32
    longpathlongpath Posts: 401member
    kent909 said:
    It seems to me the only person that would need to wipe the phone is someone with something incriminating to hide. If I was arrested I would unlock my phone. Why exacerbate the situation. If you were to write down in a notebook the same incriminating information that is in you phone the police could access that with a warrant. So how is the phone any different, other than it can be very difficult to open. This is just really an argument about rights needing to be inclusive of all. The problem only arises when police have a known criminal in custody and unfortunately that criminal has rights just like you and I. We don't need those rights only criminals do. Now if the police break the law and start making people open their phone without just cause, then the police have become the criminals and we need to access the laws that protect us from that. Now we have entered into an entirely different realm and it is now no longer about what it originally started out as. Maybe the stage is being set for the new War on Technology. 
    You really need to read "Three Felonies a Day" because you clearly have no idea just how much peaceful behavior are felonies. I'll give you one as an example. If the post office delivers junk mail to you; but it is addressed to someone other than you, if you throw it out (because it's junk mail, so you didn't bother to check who it was addressed to), you have just committed a felony and a Federal offense.
  • Reply 29 of 32
    anomeanome Posts: 1,545member

    I don't see what the problem is here. Or the newsworthiness. Law enforcement can get a warrant to have you unlock your phone with a fingerprint. This is what the warrant system is for. Provided the normal standards are applied, it's no different to them getting a warrant to let them search your home. You have the same rights and entitlements in either situation. It's also open to the same kind of manipulation by the police: exaggerating claims, using "friendly" judges, or even claiming to have a warrant when they don't. And the same protections against those, such as having any evidence gathered outside the terms of a warrant, or under a warrant gained through improper means thrown out in a subsequent court case, would also apply.

    And yes, you can defy a warrant, and be held in contempt. which could mean being detained at the discretion of the judge - usually until you give in or apologise, or your attorney manages to convince the judge to let you out.

    The scary thing is when they compel you to unlock your phone *without* a warrant, which has been previously implied to be legal.

  • Reply 30 of 32
    SpamSandwichSpamSandwich Posts: 33,407member
    the easy way to avoid having to deal with this is to just not commit crimes. This has and never will have any impact on my life. I don't do anything in the course of my day that would necessitate law enforcement to ever have to look at the contents of my phone.
    You may be breaking "the law" at any given moment and not even realize it.

    http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704471504574438900830760842
  • Reply 31 of 32
    VisualSeedVisualSeed Posts: 217member
    melgross said:
    The word "compel" is charged, and incorrect. Compel means to force, and that isn't what's happening. They're convincing the courts that this is correct.

    the way the courts are handling this is to look at what the Constitutions says in regards to self incrimination. A question that still needs to be answered is whether it's ok to force someone to use their finger to open their device, as opposed to law enforcement obtaining fingerprints in other ways, something that's not nearly as easy to do as these CSI shows pretend.

    so, for example, a warrent may force someone to give up a key, but they may refuse to do so. If so, they may be held in contempt, but that's all. Law enforcement may then break into whatever that key opened. But here, if someone refuses to open the phone there's no precedent that I've heard of that could force that action, just the ruling of contempt.
    Exactly and contempt of court is many times less severe than being convicted of whatever crime your phone may hold evidence of. The order to use a finger to unlock the phone only needs to avoided for about 48 hours. Usually being held in contempt only lasts as long as you don't comply with with order. So a smart defendant only needs to refuse for a day or two and then offer to comply with the order at which time the fingerprint will no longer be enough information to unlock the phone. If they then seek to extract a pin code, you enter 5th amendment territory.
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