I recommend against using biometric identification

Planting a gun on a defendant is much harder to do than planting a USB drive. If it really was the defendant's, they probably have munition for it, there's biological contamination etc.

It seems to me there should be an onus on the prosecutor to prove that they defendant has the key and isn't giving it up before the defendant is held in contempt of court: "Here's a video showing the defendant access the banned booked on the USB drive, she won't give up the USB-decryption key!"

In my experience as a security consultant, one of the biggest problems (and it's a very big problem) we face is that average users lack training and awareness of good security principles. It's really bad to rely solely on system designers for your security. Even if your system designer is 100% effective, it just takes one unaware user to do something bad such as give their password over to a phishing call and you're screwed. And if for nothing else, training and awareness is necessary because without it, you get users kicking and screaming when they don't understand why you've implemented certain security features, which typically means you end up implementing less security to avoid the kicking and screaming.

And just like in your average security training and awareness session you'll have a lesson on "don't give your password to someone on the phone, even if they claim to be your IT guy", we also have lessons on "fingerprints are not passwords, and you should not use them as such", but this is hard to get through people's heads when Apple's marketing material says otherwise (as shown in my previous comment).

It's kind of counterproductive to assume a singular agent "the state" in this context - all legal checks and balances essentially rely on multiple, separate, competing agents of the state controlling each other, separation of powers and all that. If police and all the judges are both on the same corrupt side then there's nothing stopping them from convicting you for murder of Abraham Lincoln and locking you up indefinitely for that, but we're working off of the assumption that this is not the case.

So your VPN isn't adding any extra layer of auth? This doesn't seem like a TouchID problem. . .

This is also a security design problem. You shouldn't be transmitting sensitive information via e-mail. If I want sensitive data stored in your e-mail, I'd start with a phishing attack long before I decide that physically jacking your phone and coming up with a complicated finger-print stealing process is the way to go.

>This is not possible on the iPhone,

To unlock the phone. You can add addition layers after the iPhone auths all you want.

>consumers are under the false impression that fingerprints are the best security available, and they become frustrated to learn that Apple has been lying to them when corporate IT tells them fingerprints actually suck

Heh. If your clients trust Apple's marketing more than their own IT people this again speaks to me of a severe communication problem among the IT people.

>You can steal someone's fingerprint by simply having access to something they touched

Not with high enough resolution to reliably fool TouchID in few enough attempts to keep it from passcode locking you out. You're fixation on worst-case scenarios where your adversaries benefit from multiple passes of blind luck doesn't make for great or realistic risk-assessment.

>Network access to a corporate environment that has millions of SSNs, credit card numbers, etc. You think that a few hours of fiddling around with a latex mold is "too much work" for this? Think again.

And you're not monitoring for suspicious activity or any additional access control on a data source that has all that sensitive information? You're just letting people mosey on into it with just their phones without so much as a warning flag going up somewhere?

>Fingerprints are inherently insecure. Using fingerprints for more accounts is, thus, more insecure.

This is both highly simplistic and wrong. For one thing, passwords are also inherently insecure, especially when people write them on sticky notes and put them under their monitors. Secondly, not all accounts need maximal security. Not all activities within an account need to give people access to the maximal extent of their privileges. Insisting on going all out on every single thing people try to do fosters insecure habits and insecure system design. You're making the problem worse.

>Apple refers to TouchID as "the gold standard", "one of the most powerful passwords in the world", says "it is the most advanced technology", calls it "very high security".

None of which is false for the use cases they're talking about. You're talking about access to sensitive PII, which Apple did not tell you to gate behind TouchID. I also have years of experience in Infosec and setting the record straight on things takes all of 30 seconds of explanation and taking the time to understand their business context. All it takes is to not treat your clients with contempt.