10 ms·

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 c

• B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago
  > a sizeable majority don't even participate That might be your best hope. (Respectfully submitted, etc, etc.)
• eternalban 10y ago
  Reading this from the Forbes article: https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3143273/Mass-Fingerprint-Case-Redacted-Copy-1.pdf 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." Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757, 764 (1966). That is so because the Fifth Amenmendment privilege against self- incrimination only prevents the use against an accused of testimonial or communicative evidence obtained from him. and yet here they are as a matter of fact seeking "communicative evidence".
  • basch 10y ago
    yet this law was made for identification purposes, not unlocking safes.
    • sliverstorm 10y ago
      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...
      • chias 10y ago
        > 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 confiscated by law enforcement, while they may be permitted to search it, they can't just play Fallout 4 or mine bitcoins on it. Another instance I think is similar in concept: juries are instructed to disregard things (i.e. pretend they don't have a piece of information for the purposes of a trial) all the time, when access to this information would be improper.
        • sliverstorm 10y ago
          To be clear I don't think it's unreasonable, it just seems it would be difficult to define & enforce, because it's already matter of public record. For example, what if the fingerprint was lifted from the scene of the crime? Can you use that to unlock the phone?
          • basch 10y ago
            if your house key is laying outside, can they use it without a warrant?
  • teekert 10y ago
    But my phone is mine, it contains deeply personal things that I put on there without the intention of sharing them. How is forcing me to unlock my phone anything other than forcing me to testifying against myself? If they could, they would read your mind too.
    • arkem 10y ago
      The analogy that's sometimes used is that of a safe full of documents. Current case law says that you can be compelled to turn over a key but cannot be compelled to turn over a password [1]. The Department of Justice is saying that a fingerprint is more like a key than a password I guess. Or alternatively that unlocking phones is search and not testimony. The EFF seems to be primarily objecting on the grounds that a search of "all devices in the building" is too vague to be a correct warrant. [1] http://www.uclalawreview.org/the-fifth-amendment-encryption-and-the-forgotten-state-interest/ http://www.uclalawreview.org/the-fifth-amendment-encryption-...
    • russell_h 10y ago
      Couldn't you say the same about a safe on the premises being searched? The self-incrimination clause of the fifth amendment is broadly interpreted as intended to dissuade the government from attempting to coerce confessions. Forcing someone to unlock their phone with a fingerprint caries none of the moral hazard of forcing them to testify. All of that being said, I'd love for US society to recognize that a search encompassing a bunch of people's phones is vastly more intrusive (by virtue of the volume of data collected and network effects) than a search of a building that excludes computing devices, and for us to require a correspondingly higher burden of proof.
    • ChoHag 10y ago
      How about we stop expecting "justice" to work in our favour and start forcing it to work in our favour? If you don't want anybody to be able to take your stuff, don't make it possible for somebody to take your stuff. A piece of paper saying something isn't permitted is not going to stop it happening.
      • 10y ago
  • countingteeth 10y ago
    The fingerprint is not communicative. That's the crux of the matter. The state of law, currently, is that if the police have you, and they have your phone, and they have probable cause that your phone contains evidence of a crime, they can compel you to press fingers to the phone. It's no different, really, then that they can force you to press your fingers onto a sheet of paper for booking during an arrest, or to take a buccal swab. What they apparently cannot do is force you to admit what if any finger of your would unlock the phone. Apparently some people use tricks like locking the phone with a knuckle or even the tip of their nose (that one sounds comical). Really though, it goes to show that the good old fashioned memorized password has not gone out of style. Any biometric or dongle-based authentication or encryption can be circumvented by legal process. And in a civil matter, judges and parties have even more power. Ultimately, if a court is convinced that you know a password and are not properly invoking a 5th amendment privilege against criminal self-incrimination, you could be held in contempt (fined daily, or jailed) until you provided the password or the password-protected materials. At this point it could well become a battle of wills and proofs, which the contemnor may well lose.
    • ChoHag 10y ago
      "If it's something you have, it can be taken off you"
  • asimpletune 10y ago
    Exactly, the fingerprints aren't material evidence in this case, but communicative testimony that could lead them to unspecified future material evidence on their phone. It's not the same thing at all.
• a3n 10y ago
  A sizable majority would go along with this, because they haven't been come for yet, as the saying goes.
  • M_Grey 10y ago
    To use another saying, the frogs in this pot are just about boiled... if not now, it's going to be too late, if it isn't already.
• awqrre 10y ago
  Biometrics could be used as a username, but should not be used as a password...
  • Grazester 10y ago
    Exactly. It is a form of identification not authentication.
    • toomanybeersies 10y ago
      I heard fingerprints described as "Authentication, not authorisation", which I think is a better description of the role they play (on the iPhone, at least), and the role they should play. They authenticate who you are, they aren't trivial to fake. However, they shouldn't authorise access to a device on their own. Your fingerprint works as a somewhat more secure, medium term swipe-to-unlock for your phone.
      • joshuahutt 10y ago
        Authorization typically means what actions the authenticated user is allowed to perform, not that the authenticated user has herself conveyed some kind of approval.
      • rdtsc 10y ago
        > I heard fingerprints described as "Authentication, not authorisation", I understand once you've authenticated who the user is, authorization is just a mask of what they are allowed to do. It is like saying "after you've given your username (GMail account) to Google, it should allow you to read your email. If you happen to be an administrator for Google Business account you can also see other accounts or settings etc". So hopefully you meant that you just use your fingerprint in place of typing out your username not in place of typing your username _and_ password.
        • raphman 10y ago
          One could see fingerprint and user/pw as two different roles - with different levels of authorisation. (Somehow similar to sudo which asks for the user's password the first time but assumes that the logged in user is allowed to execute further sudo commands without pw auth. Even if sudo does not really implement two different user roles here.)
• susan_hall 10y ago
  I'm not sure if "overwhelmingly mindless" is the right characterization. In my opinion, the most interesting story playing out among the Western nations is what is happening in Poland right now. In the USA, people fought for independence from Britain starting in 1775, so obviously those people are not alive in 2016. But in Poland, many of the people alive now are the same people who overthrew tyranny in 1989. That's an interesting story. Among the Polish public there are many who were willing to risk their lives to fight for a more open, democratic and liberal political system, in 1989. And now, in 2016, Poland is suffering the same shift towards authoritarianism that we see in other Western countries. Just so I'm clear, I'm saying I find this interesting because in many cases we are talking about the same people who were alive in 1989. In the USA you can say "Oh, that generation believed in those things, but those currently alive don't believe in these things." (I don't agree with that statement, but you could make that argument.) Whereas in Poland, it's in many cases the same people who fought for a more open system who are now tolerating the drift towards a more authoritarian system. To me, the story isn't about "overwhelmingly mindless" voters, its about voters who are angry with the failure of the system. That is, they are mindful of how the system has failed. They may not know what the answer is, but they are angry, and they are willing to elect politicians who seem to mirror their anger. It might be a bad strategy to vote for someone simply because they appear to reflect your anger, but I think I can understand the motivation, and it is not quite the same as being mindless.
  • M_Grey 10y ago
    If a voter's reaction to anger with a failed system is to shoot themselves in the foot with a pistol they've had laying around since '89, I'm going to stick with the "mindless" appellation.
  • angry_octet 10y ago
    In counterpoint to this, witness the mass protests (by women) against the proposed ban in abortion. A religious right wing pressure group pushed it along, the govt backed it, mass protests, humiliating back down. Goes to show how out if touch ruling parties are about what people think, and their belief that people actually do support their hard line policies. In actuality, maybe people are just voting based in whether their economic circumstances improved over the last term, regardless of whether the change was due to national or global factors. Maybe they just don't like the Russians and voted for the nationalist rhetoric.
• lisper 10y ago
  No, it's what happens when large numbers of people decide they care about safety and security more than they care about freedom. That doesn't necessarily make it any better, but to attribute this outcome to mindlessness is to badly miss the point. The first step to solving a problem is to understand what the problem actually is.
  • M_Grey 10y ago
    The problem is that we're not exchanging freedom for security, we're exchanging freedom for the empty promise of security and the reality of a police state. I'm still calling "mindless".
    • trendia 10y ago
      To give another example: If the US were to outlaw all forms of encryption, we would have less privacy AND less security: Less Privacy: all communication is now readable by a third party in the middle Less Security: all banking information is now transmitted in plaintext
    • tedunangst 10y ago
      A locked phone is a lot less interesting to a burglar. If the convenience of touch ID means more people lock their phones, that's not an empty promise.
      • M_Grey 10y ago
        How many people lock their phones against burglary?
        • tedunangst 10y ago
          One. Me.
          • M_Grey 10y ago
            Huh... why? I mean, burglars and hackers are usually very different people, and the former usually doesn't care about what's on your phone, just your phone. I grant however, that you could have a particular situation perhaps relating to your work which might alter that.
• bigiain 10y ago
  Alternative idea:intentionally register someone else's fingerprints on your phone - so when the cops arrive and find a phone lying on the couch you can plausibly say "not mine, here try my finger on it!" ;-) (Anybody got ready access to med school cadavers with the fingerprints intact?)
  • mekazu 10y ago
    Keeping your fingers wet will also prevent the mechanism from working.
  • tenpies 10y ago
    I really wish you could set up functionality for each finger. Index unlocks, but thumb instantly wipes the phone.
• qb45 10y ago
  > 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. Unless by rubber hose cryptanalysis. Still better than being compelled to produce one's finger, though ;)