Cops routinely unlock phones with corpses' fingers

Are the dead protected by the fourth amendment?

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When car-makers started rolling out fingerprint locks for their ignition systems, carjackers started cutting off their victims’ fingers.

Not quite. A gang of car thieves cut off a dude’s finger in Kuala Lumpur once, according to a poorly-sourced BBC article from 13 years ago.

I know that makes your narrative a bit less exciting, but dammit Cory, you should know better than this.

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Biometrics as everyday security is not a good idea, IMO.

Did no one else learn that from Demolition Man back in the day?

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For Apple Touch ID you can use finger joints, not just finger tips.

If you have Face ID attention turned on it’s supposed to wait for your eyes to move before unlocking, I’ll let someone else test though.

Honestly, this doesn’t really bother me. It’s not like they can use this for mass surveillance. if I’m murdered, go ahead and unlock my phone mr. cop.

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What? There’s plenty of beautiful songs about dead people.

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Time to start using another appendage’s “print” to secure my phone, except now I’ll have to go into the men’s room to take a call.

(Sorry ladies, you’re on your own.)

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They’re opening for Ethical Quandary on Thursday night.

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And those who made them that way.

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Maybe the police officer has to use available materials to warm the finger up. You could dunk it in a cup of coffee and dry it off.

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Does that still hold if you were also murdered by a cop?

I keep coming back to this being not unlike if you had a locked diary or briefcase with you, as well as the key. Always treat your biometrics as something that can be taken from you – passwords are ironically better protected in that sense.

As far as the Apple Watch locking iOS devices when the pulse is interrupted, instead of wiping it could instead trigger the “passcode required for TouchID” function that otherwise annoys Apple iOS users.

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You’ve probably willingly shared all the data on your phone with Google, Facebook, Cambridge Analytica, and the GRU. What’s one more interested party?

Ah yes, the old Necrophiliac Loophole!

I’d also be interested in seeing one where if you wipe it 10 times it blows itself.

/got a case of the sillies today

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and unlike a password, you cannot easily change your bio-metrics if someone does take them from you. Someone gets the data on your fingerprint? too bad, you can never use that finger for security ever again.

Also, most criminal history systems, like the FBI database, connect crimes to fingerprints and then fingerprints to people. Because people can and do change names or use aliases. So the fingerprints are the key to identifying a person who has a criminal history. I have thought- what if someone gets your fingerprint data from your phone, hacks it out, say, and then hacks one of those databases, swapping your fingerprint for the one of the criminal. The criminal is now off the hook, just changes their name. You are now in deep shit if you are arrested and fingerprinted.

**I realize this scenario is far-fetched and possibly a little paranoid. But I can see someone doing this to a celebrity or really rich person. Ransom their bio-metrics.

I know. This highlights one KEY aspect. If I forget my passcode, I can generate another. One unfortunate lathe accident (or run in with a Russian gangster), and I have to wate for axolotl research to catch up.

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If I recall correctly, Stiff Little Fingers’ label/imprint was called Rigid Digits, always liked that

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I’m not so sure about that. Being a deceased citizen does not remove your rights. While the deceased can’t make new choices, their prior choices still hold weight and they remain legal rights holders. This is no different from people who are in a coma or who are infants. They retain interests which the law recognizes giving the deceased de facto legal rights.
That we customarily honor these interests gives the deag good moral standing in our society whereby we protect certain rights posthumously. The question is whether or not the deceased’s wish to protect the information on their property from prying eyes or government intrusion should also be honored.
So, I suppose the test would be whether or not the police can enter in the home of the deceased and start opening locked safes, unopened mail, and the like. The deceased may still have an interest in protecting their privacy so unless some circumstance exists where the state has sufficient need to access the deceased’s property without consent it seems to me that the same level of protections against search and seizure should apply. After all, the laws forcing the government to obtain a warrant before a search can begin does not seem to suggest these restrictions on government actions only apply to the living. They seem to apply to things like businesses which have never been alive.

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I thought for sure that a search of the BBS for “should know better than this” would turn up more than two results.

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