Virginia Court: LEOs Can Force You To Provide Fingerprint To Unlock Your Phone 328
schwit1 writes with news of a Circuit Court decision from Virginia where a judge has ruled that a criminal defendant cannot use Fifth Amendment protections to safeguard a phone that is locked using his or her fingerprint.
According to Judge Steven C. Fucci, while a criminal defendant can't be compelled to hand over a passcode to police officers for the purpose of unlocking a cellular device, law enforcement officials can compel a defendant to give up a fingerprint. The Fifth Amendment states that "no person shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself," which protects memorized information like passwords and passcodes, but it does not extend to fingerprints in the eyes of the law, as speculated by Wired last year.
Frucci said that "giving police a fingerprint is akin to providing a DNA or handwriting sample or an actual key, which the law permits. A passcode, though, requires the defendant to divulge knowledge, which the law protects against, according to Frucci's written opinion."
don't use biometrics (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet another reason not to use biometrics to unlock devices.
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... if you are carrying incriminating evidence on your phone, or you have other reasons, perhaps political for needing it to remain secret.
Not defending this in any way. Just pointing out that for the average person, it probably doesn't make finger-print locks problematic.
But if you need to keep stuff secret from the authorities, use a good password on a phone OS with good security.
Re:don't use biometrics (Score:5, Insightful)
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"Everybody" doesn't have information on their phone suggesting they committed a crime. Contrary to the "three felonies a day" extremist conspiracy wackos, most people are above police suspicion.
Re:don't use biometrics (Score:5, Insightful)
Go through your email inbox sometime. Try thinking like a paranoid below average intelligence cop with a daily quota to meet and read the last dozen or so emails you sent out of context, same with recent text messages. Innocent statements taken out of context can be bent and twisted in a cop's, or prosecutor's head.
Got pictures of your toddler daughter playing in the sprinkler or bath tub on there somewhere? You might not want them looking through there and charging you with distributing child pornography.
The broader point is that a large percentage people have much of their personal lives on the phone. Anything that make that makes that easily accessible to the police without your consent is a big deal. Information that we kept in our home file cabinet just a decade or two ago is now on our phone, so anything that makes it easier to search a phone than a house is a big step backwards in our freedom.
So what makes an officer ... (Score:2)
... trustworthy [slashdot.org]?
Re:don't use biometrics (Score:4, Informative)
Got pictures of your toddler daughter playing in the sprinkler or bath tub on there somewhere? You might not want them looking through there and charging you with distributing child pornography.
This is FUD; have you actually read any legal statues regarding child pornography? Here's the Federal statute, 18 U.S. Code 2252 - Certain activities relating to material involving the sexual exploitation of minors, emphasis mine:
(a) Any person who —
(1) knowingly transports or ships using any means or facility of interstate or foreign commerce or in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce by any means including by computer or mails, any visual depiction, if—
(A)the producing of such visual depiction involves the use of a minor engaging in sexually explicit conduct; and
(B)such visual depiction is of such conduct;
(There are also other sections that cover simple possession, rather than distribution, but they use the same two pronged definition from (A) and (B) above, so I've omitted them here for the sake of brevity.)
Here's New York State's statute, Penal Law Article 263:
S 263.11 Possessing an obscene sexual performance by a child.
A person is guilty of possessing an obscene sexual performance by a child when, knowing the character and content thereof, he knowingly has in his possession or control, or knowingly accesses with intent to view, any obscene performance which includes sexual conduct by a child less than sixteen years of age.
Definition from that same chapter:
"Sexual conduct" means actual or simulated sexual intercourse, oral sexual conduct, anal sexual conduct, sexual bestiality, masturbation, sado-masochistic abuse, or lewd exhibition of the genitals.
Re:don't use biometrics (Score:4, Informative)
lewd exhibition of the genitals.
So basically, if it gives the judge an erection you are in big trouble.
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The Judge isn't the trier of fact in our legal system, that's the role of the Petit Jury, but why bother to actually learn how it works when you can just spread FUD?
Judges can also issue rulings notwithstanding the jury's recommendation, as they do when they feel the jury SHOULD have reached a particular verdict, but didn't, when it seems likely the jury is performing nullification of a law. (I believe it's called non obstante verdicto.)
For example, a person is tried for possession of a pound of marijuana with intent to distribute, and the defense claims it was his own personal supply. The prosecution has a slam-dunk, has the defendant dead-to-rights, and the defense argues that marijuana shouldn't be illegal.
The jury returns a verdict of not-guilty, even after the judge instructed the defense counsel that they COULD NOT LEGALLY USE THAT DEFENSE, and the defense replied that the defense rests. The judge has the power to disregard the jury's incorrect, (even if morally right,) decision because it's legally wrong. I can't say how often that happens off the top of my head, as IINAL, but the guy who told me this IAL,... so for whatever it's worth...
They used to have a saying: it's not enough to hire an attorney; for best results, also spring for a jury.
Jury nullification might not be illegal but it'll get you into a lot of trouble in the USA.
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You can still be arrested, fingerprinted, processed and held. The prosecutor will probably decide that pursuing it any further is a waste of time but you've still been arrested, are still in the system and have enjoyed a relaxing weekend with some of society's finest who will be oh-so-understanding when you tell them that you've been hauled in for totally innocent photos of your kids.
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Yes and if you should happen to get into a fight with one of your fellow upstanding citizens while in holding they will then have a legitimate charge to keep you on for longer. Now that your fingerprints and potentially other identification is in the system now if you've ever been in the same room where a crime happens in the future they might come knocking: unfortunately fingerprints don't come with a timestamp. You might very well be held innocent on each case but why should you even be identifiable? Just
Re:don't use biometrics (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously. A friend of mine had his ex-wife (they're on good terms) send him a picture of their daughter, who was something like 4 at the time. The girl was riding a toy horse, and but for a cowboy hat was buck naked. The ex thought it was cute; my friend was upset that she would encourage things like that. I told him to get that picture the fuck off his phone before he gets pulled over (he had a lead foot and a weed habit), arrested, and the cops find a photo like that on his phone. He saw the wisdom in that right away.
You can't be too careful. There are cops and attorneys at the D.A.'s office who like nothing better than to put the screws to people, at the smallest provocation; and in this "zero tolerance" world, you're guilty until you prove yourself innocent.
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You're not the one with the power, nor the one who creates the laws. Anything can be used to harass you and destroy your life.
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That did it! I'm beginning a journal on my phone of an affair with a Cuckold Policemans wife and the children we've had, with erotic details of the perversions and group sex we've engaged in and the level of impotence and ignorance he displays.
I don't have anything they WANT to find but, I can generate something the don't want to find. Fuck 'em, they're just mad about the Feds telling them to leave me alone while I am still being investigated by them.
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most people are above police suspicion.
you mean under the police radar? given any reason at all (rub the wrong way for example), they'll look, and they'll certainly find.
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Seriously, do you KNOW how many laws there are at the Federal, State, County, and municipal level there are on the books now?
you may THINK you aren't breaking any, but you'd be surprised
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"...do you KNOW how many laws there are at the Federal, State, County, and municipal level there are on the books..."
That's not even the end of it. If the federal government decides they want to persecute you badly enough they will figure out a TREATY that you somehow violated.
Re:don't use biometrics (Score:4, Funny)
You'd be surprised how many felonies and misdemeanors they could find on your phone.
I wouldn't be at all surprised. They'll find none. Don't assume everyone is like you.
Re:don't use biometrics (Score:5, Insightful)
Quoth Cardinal Richilieu:
If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged.
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You might survive but I doubt you'll come out on top. Better have a really good lawyer and be prepared to spend a lot of money.
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Just because some French guy said something that sounds sinisterly clever doesn't mean it's true.
Richilieu wasn't being glib. He was telling one of his Junior Cardinal trainees the number of things a properly trained Cardinal needed written in someone's own hand to hang him. The "six lines" statistically will contain at least one instance of every letter of the French alphabet, allowing anyone to make a convincing forgery, which is what he was actually talking about.
Before going into his father's business of Cardinalling, Richilieu was apprenticed to a master forger, and he was a life-long enthusiast
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You had me believing your first paragraph. Then I got to the second. Richilieu was never demoted to bishop!
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I wouldn't be at all surprised. They'll find none. Don't assume everyone is like you.
You mean that unlike virtually everyone else alive, you of all people perfectly sure that you've never broken any law or ordinance?
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Don't give up your fingerprint without having hired a lawyer to represent you. For the most part they can't just go looking for new crimes, although for sure they'll try particularly if no one is watching your back.
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You'd be surprised how many felonies and misdemeanors they could find on your phone.
In fact, I would. Tell me more. What makes you so sure of this?
Sure they can find something that with enough creative interpretation someone could see as hinting to a crime, if they only squint strongly enough. But something that passes the giggle test? Share your wisdom.
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You really don't get it, do you? If they're at the point where they're searching your phone, they've already decided you're guilty. At that point, if they don't find any evidence they'll just plant some.
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At that point, if they don't find any evidence they'll just plant some.
That is a possibility, yes. But then we're talking a different game and it was not what the GP claimed.
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Are you saying there's absolutely nothing on your PHONE that could possibly incriminate you? Or does that extend also to all your electronic devices or to your entire life?
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Are you saying there's absolutely nothing on your PHONE that could possibly incriminate you?
Nope. Mine's a Qualcomm QCP-1900 from 1998 (yes, it still works great) - let them look :-)
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Sure they can find something that with enough creative interpretation someone could see as hinting to a crime, if they only squint strongly enough. But something that passes the giggle test? Share your wisdom.
And that's enough, to make your life a living hell for a certain amount of time (be it brief or long, doesn't matter).
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You sped on the way to the office. Misdemeanor.
Holy shit, where do you live, man?
In my neck of the woods, it's a driving infraction, covered under civil law. Sure there's a threshold where it becomes a criminal act, but it's high enough that I can't really argue with it.
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It can take a long time to get into court. And while you wait, they'll be ruining your life.
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You'd be surprised how many felonies and misdemeanors they could find on your phone. If they find anything suggesting you committed a crime, they can make your life hell for quite a while. This affects everybody.
You know those pill organizers, because you're taking so many drugs each day (heart, etc)?
If you carry around prescription drugs without the actual bottle without the actual sticker, it's a felony. This actually happened to one of the members of my DBSA group.
No, you do *not* have permission to sea
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The problem is you don't know what will be incriminating. You happen to have a phone on your phone that has the murder victim in the background? You can't say you never saw them can you? The ME gives a 4hr hour window of when the guy died and you happened to have been in the same location within that window presto circumstantial evidence. Just the nuance factor alone can make it not worth it to progress from the casual interview to a full blown person of interest and now you need to get yourself a lawyer, s
Re:don't use biometrics (Score:5, Insightful)
Yet another reason not to use biometrics to unlock devices.
Also yet another reason to stay the hell away from Virginia. I hope that the next time someone tries to create a free country they look at our example and build in safeguards against stupid judges, law enforcement officers, DAs, etc. And when I say "safeguards" I mean literal criminal penalties for this sort of stuff.
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Also yet another reason to stay the hell away from Virginia.
This statement, given the context of your Slashdot username, struck me as highly funny.
Re:don't use biometrics (Score:5, Interesting)
Yet another reason not to use biometrics to unlock devices.
Time for a feature like "Right index finger unlocks, left index finger wipes most things, then unlocks."
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How about I just give them the middle finger?
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no it isn't. When the bacon-chompers try to force you to unlock your iPhone with a fingerprint, just use a finger other than the one you trained the device on. When that doesn't work ("It's flaky and my finger is sweaty, you know...") authentication falls back to the passcode you set up for the device. You now have Fifth Amendment protection.
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Fortunately there are reports of police forces specifically rejecting applicants with enough neurons to figure this out:
http://www.nytimes.com/1999/09... [nytimes.com]
This happened in CONNECTICUT.
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It's easy (Score:5, Funny)
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I have five fingers set up in my phone! Them's good eats!
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Why not use something other than a finger? Oops, sorry officer - it seems that my fingerprint doesn't unlock my phone....
Who knew the phone was unlocked by nose-print!
So what's next you can be scanned to read your ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Tooo slippery...
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Who knows? The main argument has been against the compelling part, if they can read your mind through involuntary responses that may be legally permissible. They probably can't get a confession that way, but they might gather leads on what you may recognize or feeling or whatever. They show you a picture of your dead wife, your brain goes to hate. That cute secretary you have a secret affair with triggers a quite different and legally interesting response. And photos from where the body was dumped triggers
New meaning (Score:3)
Kind of gives a new meaning to giving the cops the finger...
By Order of the Court (Score:2)
So if a cop ever demands you unlock your phone for them, be sure to give them the finger!
This is not like giving a DNA sample (Score:5, Insightful)
This is like being required to sign your name.
The security feature on your phone is designed to not unlock unless you signify approval.
Giving up a key or DNA sample is not signifying your approval; it's just surrendering information which is stored outside your brain.
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How is gaining access to the contents of your phone not "just surrendering information which is stored outside your brain"?
Your phone and its contents are evidence and once a warrant is issued (which I hope is still a requirement) it is fair game. What is not fair game, thanks to the American constitution, is to say "Either you can tell us that you committed the crime and we can send you to jail for the confession or you can tell us you didn't and we can send you to jail for perjury."
The password on your ph
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Information outside your brain is just information that you'd otherwise have to remember. To say that they can compel you to help them get this information, and that doing so isn't a violation of the 5th amendment, is authoritarian nonsense. The information may well be incriminating, and I see no reason why government thugs should be able to force you to help them.
They can try to retrieve the information using other means, of course.
How is this different from a key? (Score:2)
Giving up a key or DNA sample is not signifying your approval; it's just surrendering information which is stored outside your brain.
Technically isn't your fingerprint also information which is stored outside your brain? How is this really any different than requiring you to surrender a key to a locked filing cabinet? You could make the exact same argument about that as well: the key is just a means to signal approval.
Police already use fingerprint information to identify where you have been and what you have handled so you are already required to surrender this information. If you choose to have this information unlock your phone th
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How is this really any different than requiring you to surrender a key to a locked filing cabinet?
The key is a physical piece of property just like your physical phone which can be lawfully seized.
Technically isn't your fingerprint also information which is stored outside your brain?
Your fingerprint is information, BUT the application of your fingerprint to indicate your approval is a kind of signature, just like if you can't write, going to the bank, and using your fingerprint to approve a with
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Really? You can be required to sign something with your name in the US even if you don't want to? If that's true, then you're not living in a free country.
lose a finger (Score:3)
Chop the finger off and burn it. Better than some sentences that could be handed out.
Duh (Score:2, Informative)
Police have been collecting finger prints for decades, and they have caught thousands, if not millions, of criminals they otherwise wouldn't have caught as a result.
All this judge said was that you using your fingerprint on your phone doesn't give you a "get out of fingerprinting free" card when you get arrested. If it did every criminal in America would lock their phone with a fingerprint so they didn't have to get fingerprinted.
Timeout (Score:5, Interesting)
iOS implements this simply: after 48 hours of not logging in, or a phone reboot, it requires a passcode.
Any decent lawyer should be able to postpone any forcible press.
That being said, we are slowly losing our liberties.
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So if you're an iPhone user and are being arrested, do your best to power off your phone before handing it over.
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which ? (Score:3)
What about the knowledge of which finger to use? Can they just try them all?
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That was my first thought. Use only one, inconvenient digit held at a strange angle as your unlock code.
Maybe they should have a self-destruct fingerprint that causes a wipe.
Combination Lock (Score:2)
Combine fingerprints with knowledge (Score:3)
If that's the case, then a possible solution would be an encryption that unlocks on one specific finger's fingerprint, but deletes all phone data for the other nine fingers. Since the ruling says you have to provide your fingerprints fine, but the knowledge of which finger's fingerprint is the correct one is knowledge in your brain, which doesn't have to be divulged. This would also, obviously, need to be combined with secure hardware that prevents the cops from simply copying the data and trying the fingerprints one at a time with the copy.
That way, you still have the convenience of a fingerprint unlock, but extra security against seisure, since the cops would only have a 10% chance of guessing the right finger.
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And an almost certain charge of contempt of court and destruction of evidence.
The law is worded the way it is so that you can't be held liable for a password that you set ten years ago, or something you were told briefly and don't stand a chance of remembering now. Just because the court KNOWS you know, it doesn't mean they can punish you if you can't remember it.
It's not there to provide innocent defence when you are trying to hide information, but that's an unfortunate side effect.
However, as you've said
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Warning them whether or not it will delete the phone if you chose the wrong one is itself a protected admission I think. How would you know that feature is enabled it is isn't your phone? If they otherwise prove that the phone is yours can they prove that you know whether or not that feature is currently enabled?
Get the Best of Both Worlds (Score:3, Funny)
Get the best of both biometric security AND passcode security. Use somebody else's fingerprint to unlock your phone but refuse to divulge the knowledge of whose fingerprint!
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Plus, free chili.
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...but refuse to divulge the knowledge of whose fingerprint!
well, you're kinda going to give it away when they say you can make your one phone call and you say "bring me George Frinkle".
Now, what you should do is make it your lawyer's finger so it won't be so obvious when you say "I need to talk to my lawyer". Why do you need to talk to your lawyer? You don't have to tell them that. And your lawyer's finger may be covered under attorney-client privilege!
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Which finger?
How many failed swipe attempts will cause the phone to fall back to a passcode (protected by law)? How do they know you are swiping the correct finger?
You can make iOS require a passcode by... (Score:2)
Contrary to Supreme Court, sort of (Score:3)
But where this is sort of funny is that most criminals don't even maintain their right to silence and blah blah about their innocence while the cops lead them down the path to either a confession or a whole lot of information such as why they were there and the relationship with the victim and so on. So to a certain extent I wonder if the cops are sad now that the evidence doesn't just land in their laps anymore.
Where all these privacy features are coming from is not that companies like Apple think that there is a huge market selling phones to criminals and terrorists but that the real criminals are the government types who want to violate all our rights and privacies on a routine basis and that like any sane group of people we want to prevent them from doing just that; thus we seek out products that will block them as a routine and easy feature.
So when the average consumer hears the FBI or the NSA whining that a phone is too secure that average consumer will flock to that device.
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Yeah criminals always make me laugh on Cops.
"You don't mind if I search your car do you?"
"No problem man."
Followed 10s later with the cop pulling out an AK and a kilo of coke.
"Man that's not mine. I give lots of people rides it must be one of them."
I don't see it happen in Canada where I live but if that show is any indication it seems like in pretty much every state the cops try there damnest to search your vehicle and pat everyone in the car down even on routine traffic stops. You just did a slow roll thr
Yeah, the biometrics companies... (Score:3)
Have GOT to be loving this decision. I hope nobody here on /. holds stock in any of them... XD
Low Earth Orbits? (Score:2)
I thought LEO was Low Earth Orbit (like where the ISS is)
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I still remember attending a presentation where the presenter used a number of acronyms, and every single one was a completely different acronym in my career field. It could have been one of those 'fill in the sentences with ridiculous stuff'.
LEO also stands for Law Enforcement Officer. ;)
IOS Power Off (Score:4, Insightful)
Program odd fingers to unlock the phone... (Score:3)
Program odd fingers to unlock the phone, then offer up your thumb to unlock it. After three tries it fails and requires your passcode, rendering your data safe. Right?
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Giving a fingerprint for the purpose is basically the same as giving a passcode, since either way they get access all sorts of information on your phone, which you're forced to help them retrieve. Unsurprising that a judge would try to find 'clever' ways around the spirit of the constitution and put little thought into their decision.
In reality, they shouldn't be able to force you to do any such thing. No passcodes, and no fingerprints for the purposes of granting them access to your information.
So by your standard they're not able to hack your computer, or access your email account, or search your house, because all of those things reveal tons of information about you.
Nor can they have you give fingerprints, stand in a line up, or respond to a supeona since they're forcing you to do something.
This was the right decision and completely in line with the US constitution. This wasn't a warrantless search done during a traffic stop. This was a request made by the prosecutor during a trial, the defenden
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So by your standard
By his standard, they can't compel you to give your fingerprint *for this purpose*. It's about compelling you to divulge information. If they already have your fingerprint *not solely for this purpose*, they have no need to compel you to unlock your phone with your own fingers. If they don't have the right tools to do it, too fucking bad for them.
I have no interest in making it easy for government thugs to force people to incriminate themselves, unlike you and your straw men.
If you want to argue that the courts are given too much power to compel disclosure you can make that argument.
But to me this ruling seems perfectly in line with existing standards.
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Honestly, I'm a little surprised that they can't require you to divulge the passcode. From what I've read, the 5th is construed to prevent the government from forcing you to create new evidence that could be used to convict you of something; it does not protect any existing evidence (in a safe, in a file cabinet, on your computer, etc), and compelling a defendant to make potential evidence available for examination has been legit for a long time. It's just that until now, if the defendant refused, there was
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it does not protect any existing evidence (in a safe, in a file cabinet, on your computer, etc), and compelling a defendant to make potential evidence available for examination has been legit for a long time.
No. The spirit of the fifth amendment *does* protect you from that. Information that exists on paper, in phones, etc. would otherwise have to be remembered, so forcing you to help them find that information is a violation of the fifth amendment.
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Ah, you appear to be speaking of how it should be, rather than how it is. Fair enough, but not where I was going.
Re:Nonsense (Score:4, Insightful)
Unsurprising that a judge would try to find 'clever' ways around the spirit of the constitution
Care to cite what part of the Constitution this gets around? Because near as I can tell, the constitution does not protect you from reasonable search and seizure. It never has. Police with a warrant can open doors, break chains, crack safes, pick locks, take your keys, or do pretty much anything else they want to do to get access to your private information. That's been true for as long as any of us can likely remember. That's the whole point of investigations and detective work. Did you think they just went, "Aww shucks!" every time they came across a locked door, or did you realize that if they needed to get in, they'd either find the keys or break it in?
The reason you can refrain from providing a passcode is because the 5th Amendment [wikipedia.org] protects you against self-incrimination, and the very act of providing the passcode may in itself be incriminating, since it demonstrates that you have an awareness and knowledge of the device and the means to unlock it. Which is to say, while the police may have the authority (when authorized by a proper warrant) to search your phone, they do not have the authority to compel you to give up your own rights by providing a passcode.
But their authority to search your phone doesn't suddenly die just because they can't get your passcode. If an alternative method for accessing that data exists that does not involve trampling your rights, they are welcome to use it, whether it be decrypting the phone, tricking you into providing the passcode, or, yes, using your fingerprint.
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Did you think they just went, "Aww shucks!" every time they came across a locked door, or did you realize that if they needed to get in, they'd either find the keys or break it in?
I really don't think that's what's under discussion at all.
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I'd agree, actually. I brought that example up to illustrate the fault in the AC's reasoning.
The issue here is what the Constitution protects us from. The AC's assertion was that because being compelled to provide a passcode is unconstitutional, and because providing a fingerprint gives them the same access, it must be unconstitutional as well. The problem with his assertion is that it doesn't take into account why being compelled to provide a passcode is unconstitutional.
I was pointing out that being compe
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since it demonstrates that you have an awareness and knowledge of the device and the means to unlock it
And the device being able to recognize your fingerprint doesn't do the same thing?
Re:Nonsense (Score:5, Interesting)
Nope. The distinction here is that one act is communicative, while the other is not.
Let's go back to the 1966 Supreme Court case [findlaw.com] that established case law on these sorts of issues. That case dealt with a person involved in a car accident who was suspected of drunk driving. A police officer could smell the alcohol on his breath, so when the man was in the hospital after the accident, he directed a doctor to take a blood sample over the suspect's objections. In other words, his own blood was being used to incriminate him.
Some relevant passages:
We hold that the privilege protects an accused only from being compelled to testify against himself, or otherwise provide the State with evidence of a testimonial or communicative nature
Basically, they're saying that the 5th Amendment only protects evidence of a "testimonial or communicative nature". More on that below.
"[T]he prohibition of compelling a man in a criminal court to be witness against himself is a prohibition of the use of physical or moral compulsion to extort communications from him, not an exclusion of his body as evidence when it may be material. The objection in principle would forbid a jury to look at a prisoner and compare his features with a photograph in proof."
They're quoting an earlier case here, but basically they're saying that a person's body can be used to incriminate them, without it violating the Fifth Amendment. Without that being true, you'd get all sorts of nonsensical rules, like the one they cited, where the mere act of allowing the jury to see the defendant would mean violating his right against self-incrimination, since then they could compare him against a photo taken of the suspect at the crime scene. Hell, even witnesses wouldn't be able to see defendants, since they'd be able to recognize them, potentially. Clearly the Fifth was not intended to protect against such ridiculousness.
In the present case, however, no such problem of application is presented. Not even a shadow of testimonial compulsion upon or enforced communication by the accused was involved either in the extraction or in the chemical analysis. Petitioner's testimonial capacities were in no way implicated; indeed, his participation, except as a donor, was irrelevant to the results of the test, which depend on chemical analysis and on that alone. 9 Since the blood test evidence, although an incriminating product of compulsion, was neither petitioner's testimony nor evidence relating to some communicative act or writing by the petitioner, it was not inadmissible on privilege grounds.
I.e. While compulsion was indeed involved, A) that it was compelled didn't change anything, B) there was no testimony or communication involved at all, C) the compulsion didn't relate to testimony or communication.
All of this ties back in with fingerprint locks, since your fingerprint is just another form of physical evidence, like any other that you may be asked to provide, and all three of those apply here as well. Whether it's compelled or not doesn't change anything, and it, in and of itself, does not communicate anything. By providing your fingerprint, you aren't acknowledging your guilt. You aren't testifying that you did it. You aren't indicating an awareness of anything at all. You're merely providing your fingerprint...in this case on a device they have in evidence, rather than on a piece of paper. That your fingerprint's ability to unlock the device can be used to incriminate you does not mean that your rights are being violated. It merely means that "the glove fit", so to speak.
The same is not true of something like a passcode, which is, by its very nature, communicative.
IANAL. I'm just a guy who responded with a knee-jerk reaction that of course this was wrong of them to do, gave it some more thought, found a contrary view that actually made a great deal of sense, and decided to go look up some of the case history on the subject to find out what the real answer was since I found the topic fascinating.
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They can't demand that you incriminate yourself by providing the passphrase (i.e. demonstrating a knowledge and awareness of potentially criminal activity), but if they happen to know what the passphrase is, they can provide it to you and then demand that you read it back to them. Which is to say, they can demand your voice from you, but not your knowledge of the passphrase.
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Treaties not automatically law. (Score:2)
Your lack of privacy rights for American citizens do not apply to people who may or may not be citizens of countries you signed treaties with.
Translation: Nope.
When the US Senate affirms an international treaty, it overrides all lower decisions, including those of the US House signed into law.
Virginia is for lusers.
No, that's not necessarily true.
There is a distinction between "self-executing treaties" and "non-self-executing treaties." Self-executing treaties become binding law when they are ratified by the Senate; non-self-executing treaties do not.
So non-self-executing treaties are still commitments the United States has made, but they are almost never considered part of the law of the United States. Rather, laws have to passed to satisfy those commitments.
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Because then you'd get charged with destruction or tampering of evidence.
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How can you be charged with that?
The knowledge of WHICH fingerprint is the correct one ( or combination of fingerprints) is, just like your passcode, stored in your brain. They may be able to force you to swipe any or all fingers but, following the logic of the ruling, not to tell them which will work or what's the outcome of using the wrong one or wrong combination.
YOU did not destroy evidence - THEY did.
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I always think that, too, but it's Law Enforcement Officers.
Of course, I was wondering why Leos [ganeshaspeaks.com] would be able to force you, but Capricorns or Virgos wouldn't be able to.
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