…”NO”
A Northern California judge has ruled that federal authorities
can’t force you to unlock your smartphone using your fingerprints
or other biometric features such as facial recognition—even with a
warrant.
The ruling came in the case of two unspecified suspects
allegedly using Facebook Messenger to threaten a man with the
release of an “embarrassing video” to the public if he did not hand
over money.
The federal authorities requested a search warrant for an
Oakland residence, seeking to seize multiple devices connected to
the suspects and then compel anybody on the premises at the time of
their visit to unlock the devices using fingerprint, facial or iris
recognition.
However, Magistrate Judge Kandis Westmore of the U.S. District
Court for the Northern District of California turned down the
request, ruling the request was “overbroad and neither limited to a
particular person nor device.”
“The Government cannot be permitted to search and seize a mobile
phone or other devices that are on a non-suspect’s person simply
because they are present during an otherwise lawful search,” the
judge wrote in her ruling[1] shared by Forbes[2].
their devices using their PIN or alphanumeric passcode, U.S. judges
have previously ruled that protection did not apply to biometric
features.
However, Westmore said forcing suspects to unlock their devices
using biometric authentication “runs afoul of the Fourth and Fifth
Amendments” of the US constitution, which protect people against
unreasonable searches and self-incrimination, respectively.
The court equated biometric authentications like Touch ID and
Face ID to a PIN or passcode rather than something like submitting
to a DNA swab because those body features serve the same purpose as
a passcode that secures the owner’s content.
The court ruling also made an interesting point over the
Government’s urgency in forcing suspects to unlock their devices
using the biometric features in order to bypass the need to enter a
passcode.
It’s because once a device is locked using a passcode, the
government can’t compel a suspect to enter the passcode under the
current jurisprudence.
“If a person cannot be compelled to provide a passcode because
it is a testimonial communication, a person cannot be compelled to
provide one’s finger, thumb, iris, face, or other biometric feature
to unlock that same device,” the judge wrote.
It totally makes sense, because if passcode and PIN are
protected, then biometric authentication methods should not be
considered any different.
Instead of forcing people to unlock their devices found during
the raid, Westmore wrote the government can use other ways to
legally access contents of a seized smartphone in the Facebook
extortion case, like asking Facebook to provide Messenger
conversations.
The California court’s recent ruling came as a potential
landmark decision to protect people’s private lives from government
searches and could potentially make an impact on future cases like
this, provinding users the same protection for biometric locks as
offered for passcodes.
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