Controversy continues to swirl around law enforcement’s increased bullying and demanding to intrude on every facet of our lives. Recently a judge in California ordered a woman to unlock her smart phone for the FBI by using her fingerprint sensor activation to do it.
The FBI got the search warrant in the case forcing the woman to choose between protecting her privacy and Constitutional rights, or going to prison. She complied with the FBI’s request. Now, it seems we get into the controversy of it all with regard to fingerprint sensor technology log in. It seems that the FBI got the unreasonable search and seizure rule correct when they obtained a warrant but what about the Fifth Amendment prohibition against self incrimination?
Not that law enforcement, or most of the courts, are all that concerned with the Constitution these days but the legal question continues. What the judge reasoned, and the FBI, of course, applauded, was that she wasn’t incriminating herself because she was not making a statement or giving testimony. For the judge, she was just asking the woman to hand over the key to a storage locker or some such thing.
However, now comes the tricky part. If a phone has a password that is needed to eventually access the device, then the courts and the cops would, indeed, be in violation of the Fifth Amendment because anything found on the phone would be considered a statement.
Another challenge is that orders for fingerprint sensors from manufacturers have risen over one billion units in the last year. Everyone, it seems, wants them. Now that this information is available, people may think twice before using fingerprint technology for anything. Perhaps it is time for certain generations to begin to eye the courts and the police with the skeptical and distrusting eye that they both have proven to deserve.
PHOTO CREDIT: Pixabay