Utah Supreme Court says suspects can refuse to hand over phone passwords to the police | Other state Supreme Courts disagree and the case would wind up before the US Supreme Court::undefined
What happens when I have a passphrase that’s a confession to a crime that I was forced to provide?
What if I forgot my passphrase due to the stress and trauma of being associated with a horrible event or merely at the stress of being detained? Am I to be detained indefinitely without due process and without being accused of a crime?
What if the passphrase was set by my wife and I, a personal and private communication that is not in direct association with the crime under investigation?
Would be nice if you could not turn my individual liberties into Swiss cheese. I can barely see the parchment.
This guy gets it.
We need some kind of multi-account that loads up according to what password gets used. I wouldn’t be surprised if this is something that already exists in rooted androids.
I’ve mulled/wished for this for years. Also useful at borders, where in the past I have actually been asked (required) to unlock phones and laptops. Generally you have no rights whatsoever there.
Those shadow accounts would need to be ‘lived in’ to pass those border checks. My worst experience was traveling with new, obviously burner devices — border agents were extremely suspicious.
I used to have an android launcher years back that did just that thing, actually. It ran different instances of the home page based on what password you entered. You could access other instances when logged in via a 3-finger side drag, but it was able to be disabled. I don’t recall what it was called anymore but I had to have been using it back when I had a Galaxy S8 or even older.
Somewhat related, the app LockMyPix is a pretty decent media organizer and encrypter for Android, and it allows for multiple distinct vaults to store images and video in. One password for Vault A, another for Vault B, etc
No, but there is at least one app out there that lets you set a panic code that will wipe the phone when used
There is one which already exists like this, I think it was on the Mozilla phone.
I had something similar on my laptop with encrypted volumes and duress passwords. So my documents folders were all on an encrypted volume and opened by the standard super hard password. The duress password was much easier and contained a skeleton structure to look legit. The idea was that if anyone brute forced the password it would just find the duress folder first and hopefully no one would look further. Seems like overkill but I was traveling to China for business so necessary. I did however use a burner phone as opposed to my real cell.
I forgot what it was called, but someone create an encrypted file system where you could never be certain all files were decrypted. You could enter one password and files A B and C would be revealed and accessible, then you could enter another password and files D E and F would be revealed, and again, another password would reveal file G, etc.
The file system was just a big blob of seemingly random bytes, but when processed with the right password, certain patterns would be revealed, those patterns being the files. This brought with it the possibility that files would be lost, because when writing files with password 1, files encrypted with password 2 might be overwritten. Several copies of each file were stored to protect against this, but you could still lose files.
There are some philosophical / legal issues with such a file system, because you can never prove that you’ve decrypted all the files. If prosecutors wanted to claim that you had more files on the filesystem, there’s no way you could disprove it, because you can never prove that you’ve decrypted everything. Hopefully people would be considered innocent until proven guilty, but believing the law always works that way is naive.
EDIT: It’s called deniable encryption: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deniable_encryption
I doubt that’s how the password is used for. More like they copy all contents of the phone and ask the password to go through encryption. The data is already there, accounts don’t matter.
This is also the reason why it’s no good to have a dead man’s switch or the like, as in a certain password just wipes everything. You’d just get arrested for destroying evidence and they continue from a copy.
5A protections SHOULD cover divulging passwords or being forced to supply biometrics as a password.
Now, if the police/feds can take fingerprints obtained at booking and use a 3d printer to simulate that finger and then use that fake finger to open a lock, then I dont think 5A would protect that. Thats just crafty detective work.
Yeah biometrics historically haven’t been protected by the 5th amendment. I have seen other people argue that not supplying the password if the police obtain a warrant can result in obstruction of justice charges. I like to think it wouldn’t. They have the phone and a warrant it’s up to them to figure it out, a person doesn’t have to point out where they hide things in their home to police.
But if you don’t open the safe, they can destroy it to retrieve the contents. They could destroy your phone too in the process.
…Exactly. The laws in the USA don’t really reflect modern digital technology that well. Many of our legislators don’t understand the tech and the government is so divided that getting anything to pass seems impossible.
It’s pretty well established that any biometric can just be taken from you — facial recognition is super easy and it won’t be hard to force your thumb onto the sensor.
This is also the case for things like blood draw for blood alcohol testing.
The only unlock key that’s (probably) truly yours is something inside your brain.
Being well established and being valid are two different things.
How is your “crafty detective work” really any different than sneaking in through a window even though you don’t have a search warrant?
I never said they wouldnt have a warrant, I dont understand the comparison
If one had a warrant then you just force the suspect to give over. Just like forcing them to give fingerprints. Isn’t the whole discussion moot if they have a warrant?
So when you offer a path to get into the phone without a warrant it’s just like breaking into a “house” without a warrant. Technically easy - just go through the window or use the fingerprint from booking. It if we agree with due process either is wrong.
It is not, because the issue is whether police CAN compel someone to give their password.
From the article:
When [Valdez] was arrested, the police found a cell phone in his pocket and obtained a search warrant for its contents. However they were unable to crack the password and Valdez refused to provide it when asked. The police were never able to search the phone.
Further down, italics added by me to emojis the important bit.
He was convicted in the jury trial, which was reversed by the court of appeals that agreed Valdez had a right under the Fifth Amendment to refuse to provide his passcode, and that the state violated that right when it used his refusal against him at trial.
Lastly, I want to add one important distinction. Fingerprints are physical characteristics, while passwords are personal information. Fingerprints are distinct from passwords in that you have fingerprints, but know a password. You can only get one of them off a dead guy.
Police: What’s your password
Me: i forgor 💀
Yeah, I thought the magic words were “I don’t recall”. Seems to work in all those high profile cases, or maybe its just being wealthy.
You can just set your phone to wipe after X wrong attempts and do that, ending the issue.
Until your 5 years old manage to get his hand on your phone unsupervised at least
Every security mechanism is also a potential denial of service vector.
