“Should you be able to plead the Fifth if authorities order you to unlock your iPhone using Touch ID?” Oscar Raymundo wonders for Macworld.
“A judge in California has recently ruled that your fingerprint does not have the same Constitutional protections as your numeric passcode, so Touch ID-enabled iPhones are susceptible to search warrants,” Raymundo writes. “Thankfully, Apple is considering developing a new way to protect our iPhones using Touch ID.”
Raymundo writes, “In this week’s iPhone Show, we look into an Apple patent that would give iPhones a new “panic mode” to lock out personal information or reset the device entirely.”
Full video here.
MacDailyNews Take: Should you be able to plead the Fifth if authorities order you to unlock your iPhone using Touch ID?
Yes, of course.
Sometimes the law gets too cute. We shouldn’t leave common sense out of the equation. The process is the same thing. You’re getting access to someone’s most private information by forcing someone to give you the key. — David Oscar Markus, Miami defense attorney
—
You carry forever the fingerprint that comes from being under someone’s thumb. — Nancy Banks-Smith
To set a stronger alphanumeric passcode on your iOS device that cannot be easily brute-forced:
1. Settings > Touch ID & Passcode. On devices without Touch ID, go to Settings > Passcode
2. Tap Change Passcode
3. Tap Passcode Options to switch to a custom alphanumeric code
4. Enter your new, stronger passcode again to confirm it and activate itSEE ALSO:
Feckless FBI unable to unlock iPhone, even with a ‘fingerprint unlock warrant’ – May 12, 2016
The Touch ID lock on your iPhone isn’t cop-proof – May 11, 2016
U.S. government wants your fingerprints to unlock your phone – May 1, 2016
Should you disable Touch ID for your own security? – May 9, 2016
Apple supplier LG Innotek embeds fingerprint sensor into display – May 4, 2016
U.S. government wants your fingerprints to unlock your phone – May 1, 2016
Android fingerprint scanners fooled by inkjet printer – March 8, 2016
Android fingerprint sensors aren’t as secure as iPhone’s Touch ID – August 10, 2015
Apple files for patent to move Touch ID fingerprint scanner from home button to display – February 9, 2015
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Rainy Day” for the heads up.]
Make sure to use your middle finger so you can stare at the person who’s making you open your phone while giving them the finger for dramatic effect.
Better still, buy a Windows Phone with advanced biometric authentication and use iris scan to protect your data!
Easy and much more secure than an iPhone!
omg – what a ridiculous suggestion.
First – you can’t use a Windows phone, because it is the most badly designed piece of garbage – ever! I should know – I have to use a Windows Phone for work. Egads – I hate that phone. It is beyond horrible.
Second – if they can access your fingerprints, what makes you think a judge won’t let them open your eyes?
More secure? Ha ha. It seems even less secure to me.
On a Windows Phone you even have the option to use advanced face recognition software for biometric authentication, all out-of-the-box and at NO extra cost ever!!!
Who knew ms still sold phones!
Funny you would say that because I don’t know of anyone who actually uses an iPhone.
iPhone sales have been dropping like crazy … -28%, -34%, -44% … and soon to reach 0% …
You can always power off the device. Once powered on, it asks for the encryption passcode, a finger print won’t unlock the device after powering.
But FIRST, let’s agree that you are a lonely person if you don’t know anyone with an iPhone. Let’s also agree that you’re here to troll, and let’s also agree that you don’t know anything about “security.” Since you claim Microsoft (a company that sells a device that NEEDS anti virus software before it’s safe to connect to the web with).
Meet some people.
I bet you find someone with an iPhone and someone who loves their iPhone.
NOT TO MENTION: it’s not just about brand name here, it’s about Apple recycling old phones made by everyone including Apple of course. It’s about your iPhone having no toxins in it (unlike your windows phone).
Do a web search for “Apple Environment.”
What this company does for you, and your planet is unlike any tech company in the world.
Learn something.
Live healthier.
Get your a$$ an iPhone. 🙂
whoosh!
How would that work while swiping your thumb – an additional action that would give authorities time to snatch it out of your hand? Or another kind of option that they would be expecting and try to prevent? Be interesting how clever this Def Con 1 personal data option might be.
Don’t read this piece of paper I have in front of me, I plead the Fifth!
Yea, that sounds as dumb as it reads.
If you have stuff on your phone that you don’t want the police to see, then turn off Touch ID and remember a really good password. This is not rocket science.
As for the dim-witted criminals out there, I’d rather they not think about it till after the police have their phones.
The “Fifth” is for what you have in your mind, not on your hands.
What is dim-witted is making a distinction between two methods of forcing you to give up the same information. Making you disclose a code to unlock your iPhone is not allowed due to Constitutional protections. Making you use a part of your body to unlock that same iPhone is allowed (at least currently) because some bozo judge declared it to be so.
Rather than your fingerprint, use some other part of your body to establish TouchID. They could try all of your fingers and thumbs and lock your iPhone for you.
NOT dim-witted, because the fifth was NEVER designed to protect information you left lying around, just what you have in your head. You can’t, however, force me to give up the code in my head . . . because of the fifth amendment.
Now if you want to try and use the FOURTH amendment, that’s a different argument.
No one has ever tried to say you can’t have my fingerprint . . . because of the fifth amendment, that makes no sense.
I did not call out the specific Amendments, The Other Steve, you did. I merely stated that one method should not have Constitutional protection while the other does.
Let’s take this little thought experiment a little further… What happens when Apple eventually enables iPhone users to use a brainwave lock? That would be in your head, but let’s say they could use a scanner and yank it out. That would be much like taking your fingerprint of a retinal scan and, yet, it is not. They would be going inside your head one step closer to the level of actual thought. So where does it end.
In my opinion, al biometrics ought to be protected in this use case.
The 5th is designed to protect anything that you possess or know that can incriminate you…it’s called “evidence” in the biz…duh.
In America, you are presumed innocent until proven guilty by the due process of a jury by your peers. That burden of proof is upon the state, not upon a defendant to supply to the state in ANY form…hence, The Fifth Amendment.
it seems to me that they would have to tell you which finger to use. you don’t have to volumteer that info for the same reason you don’t have to volunteer your passcode. It is something in your mind and they can’t force you to divulge it for the same reason they can’t make you give up your passcode – it violates your right to avoid self-incrimination. it might only have ten options but the knowledge of which finger to use is still a passcode.
Better yet, leave Touch ID on (to fool the authorities) and only have you spouse’s fingerprint on it while you just use a passcode. That way the authorities will use up ten attempts trying to break in.
Certainly it would be a very useful feature for anyone who has to deal with organizations that put themselves above the law and/or have no regard for human beings. More than likely when someone gets sent to a Guantanamo on the Bay resort they won’t have any recourse to keeping their pass code secret for long.
Trying to follow your logic Road Warrior. Not sure I parsed it correctly.
The way I understand it is that this patent would be developed and incorporated into the iPhone so that you can have a “panic mode” to lock out personal information or reset the device entirely.”
Now I can think of a lot of uses for this feature, and it can be inferred by my response to TxUser down below but I’ll take a more domestic approach to the country of origin in this response.
Insofar as I know the constitution of that nation allows for, under the proper circumstances, i.e. a warrant, for a place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized. Fine and dandy, however at the time pretty well everything was searchable. Now a lot of fine folks at MDN have put forth ideas of items that were not searchable, a safe, but that can be circumvented as well as a journal written in a foreign language. The best example about something that is unsearchable around that time is a journal written in code. The owner of that journal is not required to decode that journal according to one of the amendments of that nation. Fine and dandy, though this was the exception and not available to the general public.
In short at the time of that constitutional assembly everything was searchable, save for the information in one’s head.
Times have changed and now we are at the brink of having a popular device that is not searchable. This feature in a device is great because it safeguards privacy and security. It also has a drawback because it allows people without ethics, i.e. criminals also value security and privacy.
This technology is coming, it’s almost here and society is going to have to deal with it. One aspect of making something unsearchable is the ability to destroy it. Again it can be nefarious evidence of a crime or it could be valuable information that one would want to keep out of the hands of criminals.
It works both ways.
Sorry about the delay, busy day today.
I think we’ve put up with this idiocy long enough. Can you produce a single bit of evidence (paranoid delusions are not evidence) that ANY U.S. Citizen has EVER been detained at Guantanamo? How about evidence of the long-term detention of anybody else, absent probable cause to believe they were involved in efforts to kill Americans? Compared to the political prisons in many (possibly a majority) of the world’s countries, the worst horrors attributable to Guantanamo are relatively small potatoes.
We live in a world where even some of the members of NATO are slipping into authoritarianism. As for Russia, China, Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the light of democracy is restricted to a few candles in the predominant gloom. The USA is not perfect, but it isn’t even below average when it comes to respecting human rights.
Then there is North Korea, THEY are on a different planet.
While I have never seen any evidence that any U.S. Citizen has been detained at the Guantanamo facility, in response to your, “How about evidence of the long-term detention of anybody else, absent probable cause to believe they were involved in efforts to kill Americans?”, there is this case:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/05/feds-say-suspect-should-rot-in-prison-for-refusing-to-decrypt-drives/
Perpetual jail time for refusing to provide the password(s) to decrypt drives even with no charges filed against the individual.
It does happen. It’s rare. It is an extreme miscarriage of justice IMHO. But it does happen.
I’m shocked, shocked by your response TXUser. I have never stated, nor have I ever implied that there is a single citizen from your nation that has been detained at the Guantanamo on the Bay Resort. I have pointed out however, that once a group, a nation in this case learns to dehumanize others they can learn to dehumanize anyone. That should be a red flag of potential warning for those of your country but for the 50 nationalities that were present at Guantanamo it’s a reality.
There is evidence that some detainees were involved in efforts to kill citizens of your country. I checked at the Human Rights Watch web site, which has a list of the cases that have been completed or in progress.
– 5 were convicted
– 10 had the charges withdrawn
– 2 the conviction vacated
– 7 Military commission referred
– 4 have been released
There is not much evidence for the rest, they are still being held their without trial, without justice, for over 11 years. Molasses flowing in February and slugs travel faster than that wheel of justice. It’s not a good track record considering the hundreds of individuals being held there.
Don’t try to brush off the worst horrors at Guantanamo on the Bay Resort as small potatoes. Any nation that should know better yet engages in such practices of circumventing the Geneva conventions and holding, torturing human beings and letting those who orchestrate such an evil machination get away with it as if they were above the law has lost the moral and ethical high ground and is no longer worthy of being part of the free and civilized world. You say that your country is not below average when it comes to human rights? Prove it. You may treat your citizens all right, but on the global stage you are a threat to global security. You certainly are below average on the global peace index, you can look that one up, your country is 94 out of 162 countries.
That’s one reason why, at least for citizens of the free and civilized world, a method to octively lock out personal information or reset the device entirely is a welcome addition to protect people from those who would treat us in an inhuman fashion. I sure hope Apple implements something like this, the sooner the better.
I am not so certain that your viewpoint is completely correct, either, TxUser (shouldn’t that be TXUser?). Just because someone has not offered any evidence of something does not automatically make it untrue.
I notice that *you* did not offer any evidence to show that no U.S. citizens have ever been obtained at Guantanamo.
When it comes to human rights, the goal should be perfection. Anything less leads to a slippery slope of when a person’s rights can be violated. So saying that the “…USA is not perfect, but it isn’t even below average when it comes to respecting human rights” is not acceptable or comforting to me. We can and should do better. Guantanamo should never have existing and “enhanced interrogation”/torture should never have been performed, regardless of whether U.S. citizens were detained there. That’s why they are called HUMAN rights, not U.S. citizen rights.
US citizen rights are human rights, you numbskull.
When arrested, we can, and do, get fingerprinted. We never seemed to have too much of a problem with that.
The difference being that fingerprinting is used as an identifying feature in one context, and an unlocking feature in another.
The moment the law allows extraction of bodily information, such as fingerprinting, your iPhone does not exempt you from this behavior.
If you’re going to protest the practice, then protest the entire practice, not just how it impacts iPhone use.
Unlocking feature against user’s will I should have said.
Yes, buy you chose to turn on that feature. It isn’t required.
The Fifth Amendment only protects what is in your mind, like your passcode. Now if you leave your passcode on a piece of paper in your pocket, or turn Touch ID on, the fifth won’t protect you.
For that, try the Fourth Amendment.
bull.
Apple could do this: 1) You register which fingers can unlock your phone. 2) You register a finger that will turn off touch ID. It doesn’t need to erase the phone. It can just require you to use the passcode to reenable touch ID. So if you are compelled by cops or crooks to unlock your phone, you just use the finger that makes sure the phone stays locked. Yes, the cops can compel you to touch your phone, but they’d likely have no way to prevent which finger you use.
I like this idea. One or more fingers to unlock. One or more DIFFERENT fingers to disable TouchID, then a required passcode (a long one [10+ characters] with alphanumerics, not just numbers and not just letters) required to re-enable TouchID.
The law enforcement situation regarding our fingerprints is not going to change. It’s accessible. They can use it, if they have a warrant. They don’t need your permission. You can’t refuse it.
Meanwhile, if you have something protected with a security lock that you KNOW (versus ‘have’ or ‘are’), they can’t pry it out of your brain and you can plead the Fifth Amendment. That also is not going to change.
Right now, there is a debacle going on about how long a suspect can be held if their prosecution is dependent upon the suspect providing access to data via something they KNOW. One loony point of view, being debunked by almost everyone, is that such a suspect can be held forever until they hand over the pass code, etc. It’s blatant totalitarianism that entirely ignores the law, specifically the Fifth Amendment. It will eventually be thrown down, unless of course insanity prevails and the USA is turned into one big Guantanamo prison.
5th Amendment to the US Constitution
“No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”
This doesn’t bend, warp or break because some law enforcement officials find it inconvenient. That means that even strongly suspected child molesters, terrorists, ad nauseam will go free because they refuse to unlock their iPhone, etc. So be it! I prefer solid written law over flavor-of-the-day law that fits someone’s wishes, panic, desperation, abusiveness, vindictiveness, misdirected ‘patriotism’ etc. No one is above the law. Keep the law and keep the nation. No exceptions.
Or change the law! Just don’t do it in favor of the goals of the bad guys. Terrorists obviously want us to destroy our own laws and nation.
/lecture. I think I’m using MDN as a note pad to perfect my rant about this subject. I apologize for putting to sleep those already familiar with the details of this subject.
DC, you state that “The law enforcement situation regarding our fingerprints is not going to change. It’s accessible. They can use it, if they have a warrant. They don’t need your permission. You can’t refuse it.”
But there are nuances to this issue. The traditional use of fingerprints are for identification. There are many reasons that we have decided to accept this use case. But fingerprints are now being used as an electronic “lock.” That is a different use case, as I stated in an earlier post. And that biometric situation could eventually be extended to retinal scans and even brainwave patterns. At what point does the use of this information to unlock personal information cross the boundary of acceptability? We have to think beyond simple fingerprints to the future implications of this precedent.
Except in the case of physics, don’t ever tell me that something cannot be changed. If enough people want to change something in our society, then it will be changed (for better or worse).
That is a different use case, as I stated in an earlier post.
I’m sorry I missed it.
At what point does the use of this information to unlock personal information cross the boundary of acceptability?
I know what you mean and I be no means approve the ‘grab their hand, eyes, brainwave patterns, etc., and use them to unlock stuff’ approach or attitude. But a warrant gives law enforcement access to whatever is at hand (eye, brain). That includes fingers…. There is a long precedent for that access/behavior. That’s why I, disagreeably, don’t see the practice changing for encrypted devices. The FBI et al. are going not going to let go of such access.
I did point out that the law can be changed! But I’m expecting law enforcement access to whatever is at hand (eye, brain) will remain as is unless something unusual happens.
IOW: I appreciate your comments and it would be great if you’re right.
What about allowing you to use Touch ID but to then have to enter a code? Even if you used a short code that otherwise would be easier to brute force, if each attempt has to be preceded by your fingerprint that’s going to make it harder if they can’t force you to give the code.
The simplest approach: If you suspect you will be put in a position that the law will demand you open your iPhone with your fingerprint, take 5 seconds and turn off your iPhone. Then when it is turned back on it will demand your passcode before fingerprint ID will work.
Law Enforcement has only opened their own Pandora’s Box being the single-minded jerks they are attempting to trample people’s privacy as efforts will now be made, and loudly touted, to keep people’s privacy secure. It won’t be long before they will not be able to tap into ANY phone. under ANY circumstances. And they’ll only have themselves to blame for it.
Of course most citizens rather love the idea of depriving the “authorities” and giving them the digital finger even if they have nothing to hide.
This is the most thoughtful (and accurate) post in this whole thread. Bravo!!
Why not have two fingerprints? — one to unlock the phone in the normal way and another different fingerprint that locks it down hard and prevents unlocking without the passcode. Only you would know which finger did which.
Simples!
=:~)
In Maryland, the courts have compelled an officer – whose own case is pending before the courts – to offer testimony against a fellow officer in the Freddie Grey case. So what happens when the testifying officer’s own case comes to trial and his testimony in the previous case is used against him. I really seems like that thing called the Bill of Rights is shrinking ever so quickly these days.