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The Supreme Court has repeatedly punted the issue down to state courts. What do you think is different this time?

• Clubber 5y ago
  They'll eventually have to rule on it because the state courts are split, when that is, who knows. It's certainly a 5th amendment case, so they'll have to address it eventually, perhaps they are waiting on the right case? I dunno.
  • alistairSH 5y ago
    What appellate courts have ruled in favor or biometrics being protected? That would potentially upend decades of case law - the government can compel somebody to produce a physical key (which now includes fingerprints and other biometrics) but cannot compel production of a passcode/combination.
    • Clubber 5y ago
      >What appellate courts have ruled in favor or biometrics being protected? This article talks about a case in the 11th circuit in 2012 and another in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, Commonwealth v. Davis. Apparently the only time you can compel someone to give their password (which biometrics serve the same purpose) is if the state already knows what's on there. It's called "foregone conclusion exception." Yet if the government can show that it already knows of the existence and the suspect’s possession of the documents at issue—i.e., that these matters are a “foregone conclusion” and thus that the factual assertions implicit in the act of production add “little or nothing to the sum total of the Government’s information”—then “no Fifth Amendment right is touched because the ‘question is not of testimony but of surrender.’” https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/LSB/LSB10416 https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/LSB/LSB10416