the concept of privacy, outside of say, what a married couple do in the bedroom, didn’t really exist when the constitution was created.
devices that are essentially extensions to ones “self” in the digital world couldn’t even have been imagined, let alone the rights required to make that one as as free as the america that was being created.
And the 4th amendment did protect those things. But those protections also had limits. The police couldn’t get your diary from your desk without a warrant. But they were entitled to it with a proper warrant. The fact that you recorded your deepest thoughts and intimate affairs on a phone rather than a dairy or private correspondence shouldn’t change that.
additionally, one would have to prove an entry in a diary was written by the person that allegedly wrote it. or even that it was owned by that person.
i feel you’re being disingenuous with regard to how much of our lives get recorded, either directly or implicitly, on our devices. concerns on this level simply didn’t exist. giving law enforcement access to your phone is allowing for some level of intrusion into your mind.
i doubt the founding fathers were thinking about how your strava runs could be used to “testify” against yourself, if you happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
It's a bit of a stretch, but I don't think it's _wholly_ without merit.
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Moreover, the 4th amendment is usually applied against state police. But the bill of rights originally didn’t apply to the states (until some clever interpretation of the 15th amendment). The state governments are not ones of explicitly enumerated powers. It makes no sense to interpret the 10th amendment to keep states from doing something because it’s not explicitly enumerated in the Constitution, when the whole point is that powers not enumerated are reserved to the States by default.
Unlocking a phone is just another fruit of the forbidden tree.
If you look at the last 20 years, giving law enforcement additional competency didn't improve anything.
This is not novel. It’s always been the rule that the police can force you to turn over evidence in your possession, even though they can’t force you to serve as a “witness” against yourself. The idea that turning over a password is like forcing someone to testify against himself because it involves a mental recollection is already a very stretchy interpretation of the 5th amendment. Extending that even further to situations that aren’t testimonial in any way (Face ID or Touch ID) is hard to defend as a matter of Constitutional interpretation (even if you think it is good policy).
The background principle of the law is that courts are entitled to all the evidence so they can find the truth. The amendments are exceptions to those rules created for specific purposes. But they are exceptions; they are not the rule. To the extent that anyone is trying to “bypass” something, folks reading those amendments unreasonably broadly are trying to bypass the general rule in favor of discovering evidence.