No, the police probably can’t make you unlock your phone with your fingerprints.
Judge Steven C. Frucci in Virginia Beach recently decided that a criminal defendant could be forced to unlock his phone using his fingerprints . Reporting of the decision has suggested that the police can make you unlock your phone whenever they feel like it. They can’t, and that wasn’t what the Virginia Beach decision was about. The United States Supreme Court has already decided that...
Read MoreWill Apple’s security measures become standard?
With Apple’s new mobile operating system scheduled for release on Monday, it will be harder for the authorities to snoop around in confidential information on Apple devices. I’m thrilled. That’s partly because I’m an Apple user and I have all sorts of information that I am ethically required to keep secret. But mostly it’s because the government has become much too willing to snoop, and...
Read MoreWould you rather trust Edward Snowden or the NSA?
As you know, unless you’re living under a rock, Edward Snowden is a former National Security Agency contractor who released records relating to the NSA’s PRISM project. Although PRISM’s scope remains obscure, it appears that the NSA has been mining all sorts of data from big tech and communications companies. That data surely includes so-called ‘metadata,’ which is information about...
Read MoreKnow your Fourth Amendment rights - searches, seizures, police powers, and constitutional law of traffic stops
This is a version of a talk I gave at the National Coalition of Motorcyclists (“NCOM”) meeting on October 15, 2011, in Federal Way, Washington. I spoke about the rights of a person stopped by the police, and the powers the police have to stop people, detain them, and search them. This talk was given to bikers, so I’ve removed some of the more colorful language from this version. Good...
Read MoreIn Kentucky v. King, the US Supreme Court encourages sloppy police work as an excuse to skip getting a search warrant.
When the news gleefully announces that a bad guy has gotten off on a technicality, the technicality is usually an illegal search by the police, in other words, the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, the supreme law of the United States. The Fourth Amendment prohibits “unreasonable searches and seizures,” and generally requires that the police get permission from a judge, in...
Read MoreTowing your car is kind of like seizing it, right?
by Rankin Johnson IV Every now and then I notice a common fact problem or an obvious legal question which, for no apparent reason, is not answered under Oregon appellate law. Criminal defense attorneys tend to be pretty creative about the legal issues we’ll raise, because there’s no other way to win a lot of our cases. So, here’s an unanswered question: Why do the police get to tow your car...
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