Touch ID
Every week, or at least every month, it seems as if there's some new court case winding its way through the system with a locked iPhone at its center. Previously, we've seen the FBI and the Justice Department ask various judges to compel Apple to assist it with unlocking the company's iPhones—presumably, giving it a means for bypassing the auto-delete feature that wipes the devices after 10 failed PIN attempts.
However, the FBI was recently obtaining a search warrant in a separate case, compelling a women to press her finger against an iPhone to unlock the device. She had just pled no contest to identity theft that day and the iPhone in question was hers, but it was previously seized from her boyfriend's house by authorities. The boyfriend, Sevak Mesrobian, is allegedly an Armenian gang member, and searching the device was part of an "ongoing probe," The Los Angeles Timesreported.
Otherwise, it's unclear just what, exactly, officials thought they might find on the device—many other documents filed for the case were done so under seal.
The entire affair has raised a number of legal questions, mostly centered on whether pressing one's finger on a device could be considered self-incriminating. In successfully doing so, one authenticates the contents of the device. Some argue that the Fifth Amendment protects defendants against this treatment.
"By showing you opened the phone, you showed that you have control over it. It's the same as if she went home and pulled out paper documents — she's produced it," Susan Brenner, law professor at the University of Dayton, told the Times.
Others argue that the act of pressing one's finger on a device is a physical activity, which should be considered separate from a law enforcement request that a person speak the contents in his or her mind. In other words, the judicial system might not be able to force you to cough up your iPhone password if you refuse to, but your finger is fair game. Law enforcement already doesn't have to ask for any permission to get your fingerprint, after all. Forcing you to press it on your iPhone, instead of a fingerprint scanner, is where things get legally murky.
This is all assuming, of course, that said request is processed within 48 hours of the last time a person locked an iPhone. Otherwise, an iPhone won't allow you to log in via Touch ID; it'll demand a password, and officials will then have to ask the court to get you to cough that up, which has been the big legal issue surrounding law enforcement and iPhones lately.
In the two recent legal cases, the FBI managed to find other ways to get into the iPhones it seized before its arguments against Apple were fully resolved in the courts.