In Riley v. California, the Supreme Court unanimously held that police need a warrant to search through cell phones, even during otherwise lawful arrests. But if you hand over your unlocked phone to a police officer and offer to show them something, “it becomes this complicated factual question about what consent you’ve granted for a search and what the limits of that are,” Brett Max Kaufman, a senior staff attorney in the ACLU’s Center for Democracy, told The Verge. “There have been cases where people give consent to do one thing, the cops then take the whole phone, copy the whole phone, find other evidence on the phone, and the legal question that comes up in court is: did that violate the scope of consent?”
If police do have a warrant to search your phone, numerous courts have said they can require you to provide biometric login access via your face or finger. (It’s still an unsettled legal question since other courts have ruled they can’t.) The Fifth Amendment typically protects giving up passcodes as a form of self-incrimination, but logging in with biometrics often isn’t considered protected “testimonial” evidence. In the words of one federal appeals court decision, it requires “no cognitive exertion, placing it firmly in the same category as a blood draw or fingerprint taken at booking.”
it’s unbelievable that there is a distinction in US caselaw between giving up your biometrics and giving up your password, and your essentially unchangeable biometrics are somehow the one you’re probably obliged to give to the cops if they ask. just an incredibly goofy system
If you have an iPhone, you tap the power button 5 times to make an emergency call, after that cancel it and the PIN is required to open the phone.
Law enforcement has been collecting fingerprints for over 100 years now, and the history of using fingerprints for other reasons goes even further back.
The error here is that we decided to start using an easily obtainable piece of data as a “lock” on our phones and computers. For many reasons, it’s better to use a password or PIN.
The MyColorado FAQ explicitly states that an officer cannot take your phone, even if they think your digital ID is fraudulent. This whole article is a ton of fear mongering. Digital IDs do not require you to give your phone to anyone, they do not require you to unlock (unless it’s a state specific app), and even if its a state specific app the cops aren’t allowed to take it anyway.
The MyColorado FAQ explicitly states that an officer cannot take your phone, even if they think your digital ID is fraudulent. This whole article is a ton of fear mongering.
no offense but: even if you were to grant the notion that this is an exaggerated problem–cops are not well known for their rigorous adherence to the law or proper legal procedure. they routinely fuck up and violate civil liberties, up to and including murdering people for arbitrary reasons. and unless police are held accountable (which they almost never are for a variety of systemic reasons), what a state says they cannot do is effectively meaningless. it’s just words on a screen, really.
Never use biometrics. It’s just not worth the tradeoffs.
