First Case Surfaces of Law Enforcement Forcing Suspect to Unlock iPhone With Face ID

[iMi]

Reading some of the responses, I have to say this loud and clear --- CHILD PORNOGRAPHY --- was discovered on his phone and he was charged with said crime. This is getting out of hand. If they have a warrant, they should be able to search the phone.

If YOU worry so much about what police might find on your phone, then I WANT them to be able to find it.

Maybe laws need to be rewritten for the twenty-first century because I want bastards with CHILD PORNOGRAPHY on their phones to be caught and for the law enforcement to be able to catch them sooner and with ample evidence.

 

[fathergll]

If YOU worry so much about what police might find on your phone, then I WANT them to be able to find it.

So for the millions of people who have naked pictures of themselves on their phones you WANT the police to find it? Weird.....

 

[Ebok]

Stupid for accusing someone of supporting child predators without cause. (What exactly was said to deserve you making such an accusation?)

Also, stupid for reciting the same old mantra of “you have nothing to fear if you have done nothing wrong”.
Your understanding of privacy is inexistent, sir.

You either support privacy, or you don’t.

Finally, your last comment about you trying to protect children is laughable.
Protect them from who? Someone that has made a comment supporting the general right of privacy?
Supporting privacy does not make you a criminal. No need to protect anyone.

you're not understanding me.

i do expect privacy but when YOU HAVE COMMITTED A CRIMINAL OFFENCE and there is a WARRANT then there is NO PRIVACY. all your belongings including electronic data is seized and is property of the jurisdiction to which the charges were laid from until the evidence can be given in court.

like i said, in order for them to even get a warrant to seize a device/data/search a home they need to go to the court and give them reasons for wanting a warrant. if police are asking you to randomly unlock your device without a warrant then it's up to you to protect yourself. police are allowed to investigate for crimes and electronic data is included in that.

what's so hard to understand? if you're not doing anything wrong no one is gonna wanna look into your phone. end of story. police don't give a crap about the average person, their dog pictures and what their instagram name is.

here, maybe this will help you understand my stance better:

when there's a search warrant on your home, a place where you have a reasonable expectation of privacy, you are no longer entitled to that privacy during the execution of that warrant. the same idea can be applied to a cell phone.

 

[DeepIn2U]

"Your Face is Your Paswword" Thanks Apple.

Child Pornography as part of FaceID forces unlock on this guys phone?! If NOT planted AFTER the unlock then screw him THIS is the definition of an Animal - child pornography is a tear in the society and human fabric celebration of life - this is NOT a human in my eyes so stake him.

Privacy issue and laws need modern changes for those of us humans that abide by them. Just glad these disgusting animals don’t know technology that well.

 

[antonis]

You can tell anyone you've forgotten a password; you can't say "don't point it at my face"

Heh I guess that's true.
[doublepost=1538454282][/doublepost]

If your storage locker has a physical key and the police have the physical key and a warrant to search the locker, that is fine. No problems there.

If they need a password out of your brain, they have a problem.

There is actually nothing weird about this and the law actually doesn’t need changing.

WE ARE the consumers who decided to move our security from inside out brains to outside of our body. That takes them out of the 5th Amendment’s purview.

But that’s our fault, not the Constitution. Apple gives us the ability to disable face/touch ID. If this kind of stuff matters to you, you should do that.

Me? I leave ‘em turned on cause the convenience outweighs the other factors for me.

But we all have that choice to make. It’s not the government’s fault. It’s our choice.

I see your point, but it is unrealistic to use a passcode every time you need to unlock your device. Practically, there's no real choice here. It is conveniently arranged in a way that you are exposed to law enforcement, if you need to use your device. In all honesty, there's no real (e.g. ethical) difference between forcing you to reveal your passcode and forcing you to put your finger to the fingerprint scanner, against your will.
[doublepost=1538454397][/doublepost]

Because you can be fingerprinted and photographed without your consent.

True. But then, if they take my fingerprints or photograph me without my consent, they still won't have a material to unlock my phone. Forcing me to do it is kind of a different thing.

 

[Ankaa]

I can't believe that on here, under the cover of privacy concerns, people essentially defend a potential child abuser....

 

[Wando64]

you're not understanding me.

i do expect privacy but when YOU HAVE COMMITTED A CRIMINAL OFFENCE and there is a WARRANT then there is NO PRIVACY. all your belongings including electronic data is seized and is property of the jurisdiction to which the charges were laid from until the evidence can be given in court.

like i said, in order for them to even get a warrant to seize a device/data/search a home they need to go to the court and give them reasons for wanting a warrant. if police are asking you to randomly unlock your device without a warrant then it's up to you to protect yourself. police are allowed to investigate for crimes and electronic data is included in that.

what's so hard to understand? if you're not doing anything wrong no one is gonna wanna look into your phone. end of story. police don't give a crap about the average person, their dog pictures and what their instagram name is.

here, maybe this will help you understand my stance better:

when there's a search warrant on your home, a place where you have a reasonable expectation of privacy, you are no longer entitled to that privacy during the execution of that warrant. the same idea can be applied to a cell phone.

Oh, I understand you very well.
You are quite entitled to this opinion. In fact I mostly agree with it.

What you did wrong was to accuse someone of “supporting child predators” because they posted a comment generally supporting privacy. That is simply unacceptable and someone had to point it out.
Supporting privacy is not the same thing as supporting child predators or any other criminal.

 

[dilbert99]

Your point being?

I get it. Just because I feel that I have nothing to hide from law enforcement doesn't mean that I should just surrender my privacy without putting up a fight. At the same time, all this paranoia against the authorities feels quite dismaying to me. They are supposed to be serving the people, yet it seems that a lot of energy is invested in just looking over our shoulders and keeping them out of our daily lives.

I guess I should consider myself fortunate that law enforcement in my country is quite trusted and respected.

Nothing to hide is a fallacy.
One example, just say I was a whistleblower (or insert any other reason here) and police forced me to unlock my phone. That could for instance affect my safety (or insert any other reason here). And that is just one example.

 

[hudson1]

You don't have to say you forgot it. All you have to do is refuse. Unlike your biometrics...the law needs to be changed, or challenged.

Change the law? Write to your Congressman.
[doublepost=1538486510][/doublepost]

Tell that to the US Customs & Border Protection agents who force random people to unlock their phones (without a warrant) so they can search your phone's contents and/or save a copy of your device's contents when you're leaving or entering the United States (whether you're a citizen of the US or foreign).

• https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/14/business/border-enforcement-airport-phones.html
• https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/15/14629022/border-search-customs-data-privacy-encryption

It's a prevalent enough occurrence that 1Password even made a travel mode, so you can delete your passwords and restore them once through customs, so they won't receive a copy of all of your accounts/passwords if this happens to you.

• https://support.1password.com/travel-mode/

It's a prevalent enough occurrence? I go through US immigration frequently and I've never seen anything remotely like this take place. In fact, all they ever say to me is 'Welcome home".

 

[TantalizedMind]

I have one too. I just wish Apple Pay would work on it for online and Apple Pay Cash. It's running iOS 12 nicely.
[doublepost=1538429073][/doublepost]
It actually does strobe a light on your face, you just can't consciously see it in the visible realm. I'm surprised people are not having seizures yet or linked them to face id.
Hold another camera up to the front of your X and you'll see it.

How much storage is on your 5S?

 

[Ebok]

Oh, I understand you very well.
You are quite entitled to this opinion. In fact I mostly agree with it.

What you did wrong was to accuse someone of “supporting child predators” because they posted a comment generally supporting privacy. That is simply unacceptable and someone had to point it out.
Supporting privacy is not the same thing as supporting child predators or any other criminal.

Alright. Agree to disagree on that comment but that’s how I interpreted it

 

[dysamoria]

It's infrared light so it's not visible. BTW, Face ID has been out for over a year now and you still don't know how it works?

I don’t have such a phone. I have an iPhone 6s with TouchID and I like TouchID. Thanks for explaining that it uses an infrared spotlight to light the user’s face for the camera. I somehow missed that fact.
[doublepost=1538543995][/doublepost]

I have one too. I just wish Apple Pay would work on it for online and Apple Pay Cash. It's running iOS 12 nicely.
[doublepost=1538429073][/doublepost]
It actually does strobe a light on your face, you just can't consciously see it in the visible realm. I'm surprised people are not having seizures yet or linked them to face id.
Hold another camera up to the front of your X and you'll see it.

Human retinas don’t respond to infrared (right??), so it won’t trigger seizures.

 

[Tech198]

If with a warrant to search a house one is forced to let the police in, eventually things might be seized, why someone letting the police in a phone should be any different? Phones, computer or whatever. A judge warrant is a warrant.

This context is not about privacy.

Privacy would be some company or individual having access to your private data without your consent (or not under a judge warrant).

If America starts to distrust its judiciary system and taking privacy, protection (guns etc) to its own hands (including "hiring" private companies like Apple) because the system is failing, the fabric of democracy .... dark and hot ages ahead I predict.

I repeat, this is not about privacy.

Yes it is... The fact they SAY you need a warrant first, makes you trust them doesn't it..

with all the power in their hands, they can do what they want with no over-sight. Power has taken over.

When you have the "5th Amendment" and "safe harbor" protections in place, things go in all directions.

 

[alexgowers]

US law is always linked to the amendments. What most don’t realise is that most of the amendments are ignored or just plain overwritten by many laws. The current law is based on a more universal idea that thoughts are NOT crimes and you have the right not to have thoughts extracted by force.

While I think any digital system can be brute forced, however if you encrypt and protect data with biometric or password you expect it to be private and secure from anyone including the police and the law. If the law want to nail you for a crime then it should be done via normal methodology, it’s lazy police work to rely on data from a phone. It’s easy to be swayed into thinking police action is justified in such cases due to the nature of the crime. But I would think in this case there was no coercion and it sounds like they already had enough evidence before unlocking the phone. We all have the right to privacy even if that is only a flimsy expectation in a civil society.