FYI for iPhone users if you run into the Fuzz and you need to lock it out of biometrics, hit the lock button five times. This will start the emergency call count down but once canceled the iPhone can only be opened via passcode. Caveat, you need to have the five press to call turned on in Settings>Emergency SOS>Call with 5 Button presses
If you haven’t locked the device down by the time they have instructed you to unlock it, doing then might be considered obstruction, but until they compel you to do it, you can do whatever you like with the phone.
As for destruction of evidence, it certainly wouldn’t be that, but even if it could be, it would kind of depend on them proving intent because you’re not under arrest yet or charged with anything. They would have to prove that you were aware of an impending investigation when you made the choice to dispose of evidence.
On my Android I can scan the wrong finger a few times and it’ll ask for my pin instead. I’m pretty sure rebooting would do the same but I’m too lazy to try that right now.
However, please make sure you try this yourself for your specific phone and Android version before relying on it.
idk maybe its just my phone (I'm on graphene os, a privacy and security focused ROM) but I have an option for "lockdown mode" which disables biometrics
Reboot has forced PIN/Pass for I think the entirety of Androids existence, but if not then for sure long enough that the phones that didn’t don’t work anymore as phones.
Rebooted android requires pin/pass only because you are essentially un-encrypting the phone. So if you use android and get in a mess with the police, shut down your phone immediately. It’s been this way for a long time, but it’s been far too long since 1.0-4.0 that I can’t remember.
Pattern unlock is effectively the same as a pin, just without numbers. You can use the pattern unlock without the PIN code. But fingerprint unlock is a secondary unlock type on top of the primary one which is a PIN code. And no, they haven’t changed it, if you reboot the phone, a pin code is required first in order for it to boot up.
On my Android I can scan the wrong finger a few times and it’ll ask for my pin instead.
Be careful. If they’ve ordered you to use your fingerprint to unlock the phone, and you “accidentally” do it wrong five times in a row to cause the device to lock, that may be considered disobeying an order.
You would want to lock the phone down before they’ve ordered you to do this.
For Android there's a literal "lockdown mode" button on the lock screen that does this, if you push it you can only use pattern or PIN for the next unlock.
You can also just hold the power and volume up buttons. You don’t actually have to swipe to power off the phone. Just holding those buttons long enough for the “Swipe to power off” to appear on screen will also lock out biometrics and force a PIN.
I feel like this has always been the case? There’s not a lot of precedence to be sure, but people have been operating under that assumption for a long time.
That’s why, if you need to keep the cops from looking in your phone, you should use a password. Can’t be compelled to give a password.
The classic example is a safe. There’s tons of court precedence that you can be compelled to give the cops a physical key to unlock it if there is one, but you can’t be compelled to tell them the combo if it’s a dial lock.
It’s also highly dependent on how incredibly racist the judge and cops are. Warren Demesme had his 5th amendment rights taken away from him because he demanded, quote, “a lawyer, dawg.” The Louisiana supreme court, who I’m legally not allowed to voice my opinions on, pretended that this was in some way ambiguous, and so his statements made after this clear demand for a lawyer could still be used against him in court.
To add onto that, it doesn’t prevent them from breaking into a phone or safe. If they have probable cause or a warrant to search either, they have the legal right to search them. Whether they choose to search them or not given this probable cause depends on the crime being investigated, the difficulty of successfully obtaining the contents, and overall desire to solve the crime/fuck with you. They probably aren’t drilling out a huge safe for a jaywalking case. For a murder case, they are probably leaving you with a broken and useless safe and all the contents confiscated.
Fingerprint unlocking is always secondary to there being a pin which is equivalent to a password.
As long as you turn your phone off before approaching/being approached by cops, or before they demand that you unlock it, you’ll be fine. You don’t even have to take it out of your pocket or look at it to turn it off, just hold the power button for a few seconds.
If you’re even more paranoid, enable the setting that requires a PIN code to reactivate the fingerprint unlock after 30 minutes or something.
Or force it to demand the pin after a single failure of the fingerprint unlock and then let your finger kind of slip when they tell you to unlock it.
There are countless ways to mitigate the risks here. You don’t have to forgo fingerprint unlock entirely.
I use tasker to automatically lockdown my phone if it experiences too much acceleration. I figure that if I’m being thrown to the ground, I probably want to lockdown my phone. A sharp tap on my pocket works pretty well too.
Luckily LineageOS and GrapheneOS have a lockdown mode (Graphene also supports disabling fingerprint for screen unlock), though rebooting your phone usually doesn’t cause you to lose any work since everything autosaves as phones kill background apps to save battery and memory. Separate user profiles for situations like protests or certain contexts (preferably with some dummy data to make it not look to sus) are also useful.
It’s very unlikely the OS actually kills apps in the background as that would legitimately break many apps and is a source of frustration from other OEMs.
There’s a difference between killing an app and putting it into a less active state.
When you swipe an app away from your recent lists, it’s not actually killing it, its just putting it in a different state.
When your force stop an app from its info under settings, you’re actually killing it. Nothing about it is alive.
When you actually kill an app, things like alarms stop functioning. The app needs to be alive for the alarm to function. Even so much that when you set an alarm on your phone, you need to set the alarm again after rebooting as they arent permanently stored and if the phone is rebooted the app needs to be woken up and the alarms re set. There’s a whole development workflow to do that.
There was a brief period many years ago when an OEM actually force killed an app when swiped away from recents without fully understanding the implications and they later reverted the change.
Push notifications of any type would also completely cease functioning.
Turn on pin-secured boot and shut off the phone and a fingerprint should be useless now, right? And don’t the cops have a lot people’s fingerprints on record? Are we just waiting for a cop with a higher than room temperature IQ to come up with a duplicating method to get in people’s phones without warrant or even probable cause?
The initial pin that most folks have to enter is needed to decrypt the partition with user data. This is not 100% foolproof for keeping LEOs out since there are many known, and likely more unknown, ways to brute force these but it is still the best option.
Some do. You can also just restart a phone real quick and it’ll demand your passcode not biometrics.
The passcode itself isn’t circumvented by this, after all.
But locking/resetting your phone should be an urgent thing, if you suspect the police will take it. Apple also does this if you hit the power button 5 times fast.
Samsung phones have a lockdown mode you can get to when you keep the power button pressed (like when you want to shut down). The legal situation is the same here in Germany - fingerprint unlock can be forced, regular pin or other measures not.
Payne conceded that “the use of biometrics to open an electronic device is akin to providing a physical key to a safe” but argued it is still a testimonial act because it “simultaneously confirm[s] ownership and authentication of its contents,” the court said. “However, Payne was never compelled to acknowledge the existence of any incriminating information. He merely had to provide access to a source of potential information.”
If you can be compelled to hand over a key to a safe, I can see how that translates to putting your thumb on the scanner.
The constitution is only used to protect property rights of the owners and the power of managers. The working class is not often afforded it’s protections.
Never use biometrics to lock anything. You can be forced to push a finger to a sensor, or your head forcibly held still for a facial scan.
Only use passwords/passcords. only they are secure against this totalitarian bullshit.
They’ll still put you in jail on fake charges if you refuse to give your passcode, but at least your datas safe and now your case is unlawful imprisonment instead of relying on octogenarian judges thinking its okay to force compliance with a biometric.
If we’re talking about a situation where they can just straight up beat you legally until you give them a passcode, then what’s on your phone likely doesn’t make a difference in the outcome.
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