Suspects can refuse to provide phone passcodes to police, court rules

Re:Suspects can refuse to provide phone passcodes to police,... by wyldfire on Friday December 15, 2023 @04:37PM (#38659131)

It's kinda interesting but I think a judge might not rule in your favor this because the passphrase itself isn't necessarily your claim of fact as an under-oath testimony. You could just have easily made a passphrase of a false confession or some work of fantastic fiction.

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Re:Suspects can refuse to provide phone passcodes to police,... by bee_rider on Friday December 15, 2023 @05:22PM (#38659556)

Hmm. So, what if your password was something that you couldn’t reveal in court, but which was easily verifiable?

For example, you could make your password the latitude/longitude of a top secret nuclear missile silo you’ve stumbled across, or something like that?

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Re:Suspects can refuse to provide phone passcodes to police,... by wyldfire on Friday December 15, 2023 @06:33PM (#38660207)

But even that could be revealed with the same controls used in courts that handle those issues like unauthorized disclosure of the nuclear missile silo location.

I suppose for the most part one critical function of judges is to override legislation when it appears that injustice would take place. We can't have murderers who say "sorry found some sweet loophole lol". And similarly we can't have abusive cops/prosecutors who want to harass citizens "tell us all your secrets and I'm sure you're guilty of something lol". Judges should be able to make sane tradeoff in the name of justice.

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Re:Suspects can refuse to provide phone passcodes to police,... by kelnos on Saturday December 16, 2023 @04:23AM (#38662961)

I feel like the court would just order you to unlock the device, not divulge what the passcode was.

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