Virginia judge: Police can demand a suspect unlock a phone with a fingerprint

But passcodes need not be divulged as per the Fifth Amendment, court says.

Read the whole story

 

[Solomon Black]

Am I out on a limb for thinking it ought not be permitted for the police to expect any cooperation out of you if you are a suspect?

 

[Solomon Black]

ChickenHawk[/url]":249jr64n]This is the problem with the literal version of statutory interpretation - it leads to stupid results that make nonsensical distinctions.

Instead the Judge should have applied the Nuisance rule, or taken a purposeful approach - what is the "Nuisance" that was addressed by the law.

Would the people who drafted the Bill of Rights recognised "Personal Papers" to mean actual bits of paper, or the information in them. If we asked them: "Hey guys, if instead of putting it on Parchment, we had a magical box that displayed the stuff you'd normally write down, a box that displayed it when you put your thumb on it, would that be different?"

I defy anyone to tell me, with a straight face, they would have said that the magical box is different because it wasn't on bits of dead tree.

Well they might... but only because you are clearly a ridiculous charalatan and being enlightened and educated men who have no congress with superstition they'll have no business with such chicanery as magical boxes.

...

Obviously I see your point but I'm not entirely joking. The Founders were capable of both farsighted wisdom and staggering moral blindspots. Speculating what they might have thought of modern technology is always going to be a bit of a leap. In a way you almost reinforce that literal interpretation by placing undue weight on the original drafters opinions as being of prime importance.

What we more of is to not justify things in guessing what people two hundred years gone would have thought, as much as addressing what if any changes in interpretations and/or actual changes in the law are required in light of modern technology.

 

[Solomon Black]

DNick[/url]"rpowyty]

Solomon Black[/url]"rpowyty]Am I out on a limb for thinking it ought not be permitted for the police to expect any cooperation out of you if you are a suspect?

It's sort of like if there's probably evidence in your safe or your locked desk drawer. They can get a warrant to compel you to unlock those, and if you don't, they'll break into them. The goal isn't to stop law enforcement from their legitimate pursuit of criminals, it's to prevent them from accessing your data in secret, without a signed warrant. If they have probable cause to get a warrant, they should have access to the data. Encryption is to prevent them from going on a fishing trip through all the world's data, to see what everyone is up to so they can decide who to go after.

And for me I'll say that I should (even if I don't nessecarily in the law right now) have the right to tell the cops they're free to execute that warrant by cracking my safe (if they can) but they should not be able to compel me through force of law meaning I get charged with some penalty for not complying AND they still crack my safe.

Now if I'm refusing to cooperate I can't sue them for damage to my safe either since I had the chance to open it in the context of a search warrant and did not.