Feds Walk into a Building and Demand Everyone's Fingerprints to Open Phones

Re:Feds Walk into a Building and Demand Everyone's Fingerpri... by chias on Monday October 17, 2016 @12:15AM (#12722652)

> 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.

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Re:Feds Walk into a Building and Demand Everyone's Fingerpri... by sliverstorm on Monday October 17, 2016 @11:50AM (#12726127)

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?

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Re:Feds Walk into a Building and Demand Everyone's Fingerpri... by basch on Monday October 17, 2016 @11:58AM (#12726221)

if your house key is laying outside, can they use it without a warrant?

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