Is It Legal for Cops to Force You to Unlock Your Phone?

Because the relevant Supreme Court precedents predate the smartphone era, the courts are divided on how to apply the Fifth Amendment...

Judge: Law Enforcement Can't Force Suspects to Unlock iPhones with FaceID

A U.S. federal judge has ruled that law enforcement can’t force people to unlock their iPhones using the phone’s biometric capabilities – like FaceID or TouchID. The ruling comes from a Jan. 10 filing, for which police were seeking a search warrant as part of a cyber-extortion case. The victim wa...

Police Can't Force You To Unlock Your Phone Using Face or Fingerprint Scan

Can feds force you to unlock your iPhone or Android phone? ..."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 ca...

Man Jailed 6 Months for Refusing to Give Police his iPhone Passcode

Remember Ramona Fricosu? A Colorado woman was ordered to unlock her encrypted Toshiba laptop while the FBI was investigating alleged mortgage fraud in 2012, but she declined to decrypt the laptop saying that she did not remember the password. Later the United States Court ruled that Police can...

Search Warrant Targets Fingerprints to Crack Open iPhones

Civil libertarians and security experts say a Department of Justice search warrant goes too far in seeking fingerprint data to crack open smartphones. The warrant in question would allow law enforcement to search a Lancaster, Calif., residence for an undisclosed number of smartphones. The warrant...

Child Porn Suspect Held in Jail for 7 Months for refusing to Decrypt Hard Drives

In Brief A suspect of child pornography possession, Francis Rawls, who is a former Philadelphia Police Department sergeant, has been in solitary confinement without charges for last seven months and will remain until he complies with a court order forcing him to decrypt his password-protected har...

Police Can't Force You To Unlock Your Phone, It violates Fifth Amendment Rights

Can the Cops can make you unlock your iPhone? ..."NO" According to a recent Federal Court’s ruling, it is not okay for police to force suspects to unlock their phones with a passcode. And, doing so would be a violation of your Fifth Amendment Rights in the US Constitution. The ruling came as the...

Massachusetts Supreme Court Rules Defendant Must Decrypt Data

Encryption software has been enjoying a prolonged day in the sun for about the last year. Thanks to the revelations of Edward Snowden about the NSA’s seemingly limitless capabilities, security experts have been pounding the drum about the importance of encrypting not just data in transit, but...

EFF: Fifth Amendment Protects Against Compelled Decryption

With new leaks about the extent of U.S. government surveillance coming almost daily, one constant remains among all the deterrents to the NSA’s prying eyes: encryption technology works. As far as we know, the math behind encryption is solid, despite the specter of some unnamed breakthrough made b...

EFF: Forced Decryption Violates Fifth Amendment

If the government would like to force Jeffrey Feldman to decrypt the contents of the hard-drives and Dell computer found in his apartment, then they must offer him immunity and cannot use any of the information found on the devices as part of their case against him. That is what the Electronic...

Suit Filed Against NSA, Obama Over Surveillance Program

A group of people, including a former federal prosecutor and the parents of a Navy SEAL sniper killed in action, have filed a class-action law suit against the National Security Agency, Verizon and President Obama over the NSA’s collection of cell phone data. The suit says the order that enabled...

Feds Sidestep Controversy By Circumventing Device Encryption

A Colorado District Court Ruling to force the suspect in a fraud case to surrender the encryption key to her laptop was deemed unnecessary after federal authorities managed to circumvent the device’s encryption, Ars Technica reports. The development effectively ends what has been a controversial...

Court Ruling: Forced Decryption Violates the Fifth, Sometimes

The Eleventh Circuit of the US Court of Appeals recently handed down a landmark ruling, establishing a precedent under which the contents of an encrypted hard-drive are protected by the Fifth Amendment’s ban on self-incrimination. Briefly, the facts of the case are these: John Doe is suspected of...

Court: Forced Hard Drive Decryption Doesn't Violate Fifth Amendment

In what may become a precedent setting digital rights ruling, Judge Robert Blackburn of the United States District Court of Colorado ruled that compelling an individual to provide access to the encrypted contents of a device does not violate the US Constitution’s prohibition of self incrimination...

EFF Argues Forced Decryption Violates Fifth Amendment

Digital civil liberties organization, the Electric Frontier Foundation EFF, appealed to the U.S. District Court of Colorado arguing that encrypted personal data is covered by the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self incrimination. The group submitted a brief of Amicus Curaie .PDF last week o...