A judge in a Los Angeles courtroom ordered a woman to use her fingerprint on an iPhone after authorities obtained a search warrant compelling her to unlock the smartphone.
The woman in question is identified as 29-year-old Paytsar Bkhchadzhyan, whose boyfriend is allegedly an Armenian gang member. The iPhone was seized from a house in Glendale and prosecutors wanted to gain access to the smartphone's data in connection to identity theft case.
FBI arrested Bkhchadzhyan on suspicion of identity theft, a charge that the woman pleaded no contest to and was eventually sentenced for on Feb. 25, the LA times reported.
Search Warrant
Based on jail records and court documents, a search warrant was issued 45 minutes after the woman has been taken into custody. Then an FBI agent made Bkhchadzhyan press her finger on the phone.
While it is true that the police searched the phone under a valid warrant, and that the person in custody can be compelled to provide their fingerprints even without prior permission from a judge, there are legal experts who say that providing a fingerprint in this context could be a form of self-incrimination.
"It isn't about fingerprints and the biometric readers," said Susan Brenner, a law professor at the University of Dayton. "The contents of that phone, much of which will be about her, and a lot of that could be incriminating."
The Glendale case is so far the first case of its kind, wherein a judge has ordered a charged suspect to unlock a device using fingerprint.
For the first time in a federal case, a LA judge ordered a woman to unlock her iPhone with her fingerprint. https://t.co/dUAS006xlF
— Christopher Soghoian (@csoghoian) April 30, 2016
Right Against Self-Incrimination
Arguments on the case revolve around the notion on whether pressing one's finger on a device could be a violation of the Fifth Amendment, which protects defendants against self-incrimination.
Brenner added that once a person unlocked the phone, that also shows the person has control over it. She compared the act to going home and pulling out paper documents. In this case, opening the phone is then similar to producing a document.
Others argue that pressing one's finger on a handset is purely a physical activity and is very much different from making the person speak what they think, which is a probing process usually part of enforcing the law.
In short, a judge may not be able to force a person in custody to reveal his iPhone password if a person wants to exercise their right against self-incrimination. However, the situation may not be the same when it comes to using one's finger, which only creates a physical contact and is "beyond the control of the mind," if that's how they put it.
