Feds Walk into a Building and Demand Everyone's Fingerprints to Open Phones

Post by asimpletune » Mon, Oct 17, 2016, 3:19 PM UTC

eternalban wrote: post #3

M_Grey wrote: post #2

Just another reason to forgo the convenience of biometrics in favor of a password/phrase that exists only in your mind. At least for now, that's something you can't be compelled to produce. Really though, this descent into a police state is such a pathetic outcome for this country. Dangerous, scary, and tragic, but also... pathetic. This is what happens when a sizeable majority don't even participate in the electoral…

Reading this from the Forbes article: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3143273/Mass-Fing... Relevant bits start at page 5 (III - LEGAL DISCUSSION). Compelling a person to provide his or her fingerprint does not implicate, let alone violate, the Fifth Amendment. "[B]oth federal and state courts have usually held that [the Fifth Amendment] offers no protection against compulsion to submit to fingerprinting."…

Post by sliverstorm » Mon, Oct 17, 2016, 3:50 PM UTC

chias wrote: post #121

sliverstorm wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, and considering fingerprint's long history as identification, it seems like it would be both impossible & unreasonable to try to split the two uses. Can we really say "You only obtained his fingerprint for the purpose of identifying him, you can't use it to unlock the phone"? And, we can't reasonably try to end the use of fingerprints as ID...

> Can we really say "You only obtained his fingerprint for the purpose of identifying him, you can't use it to unlock the phone"? That seems to me to be a very reasonable thing to say. It seems to me that we have plenty of mechanism in place to say "you have X, you can use it for Y, and not Z, because using it for Z violates someone's rights". As a super contrived strawman example, if your computer ever gets confisca…

Post by dagss » Mon, Oct 17, 2016, 5:14 PM UTC

M_Grey wrote: post #167

dagss wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thieves sell the phone on to people who know how to exploit what is on your phone to try to get access to your accounts and money.

How would your phone give them access to any of that? All of that kind of thing is inevitably protected by more security layers they won't be able to break, and meanwhile, the phone itself is worth something once wiped. Worse, the longer they fiddle with your phone, unwiped, the longer they risk someone tracking that phone. They're burglars, not masterminds.

Post by stryk » Mon, Oct 17, 2016, 6:47 PM UTC

viral_krieger wrote: post #93

stryk wrote: post #85

This is one reason I've always wanted to have two separate authentication credentials for one user. Unfortunately, I've yet to find an acceptable or easy way to implement that on any device that would need it (your phone, your laptop, any device which you want to keep stuff private). For example: have one authentication method that unlocks the device to the typical desktop environment, command line, or whatever -- ju…

I think Qubes OS ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qubes_OS ) does something similar to what you're looking for. You can set it up so when you login your "qube" (The virtual machine you're currently using) is a normal looking operating system that doesn't have access to any of your protected files. You can then load up your protected files and programs by starting another password protected "qube", which is similar to…

Post by carterehsmith » Mon, Oct 17, 2016, 6:50 PM UTC

abgawrv wrote: post #122

carterehsmith wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am curious. So... how often are you actually in a situation like that? You know, police with a search warrant. Or, do you feel that there is a reasonable possibility that will happen to you?

It does happen by mistake. My apartment was raided by police and I know four others who have been raided too. In two of those cases, the people who were raided had nothing to do with any kind of illegal activity. The other three were drug related, of course.