Feds Walk Into A Building. Demand Everyone's Fingerprints To Open Phones

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Hendricks Dewayne <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Date: October 16, 2016 at 4:47:55 PM EDT
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] Feds Walk Into A Building. Demand Everyone's Fingerprints To Open Phones
> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> Feds Walk Into A Building. Demand Everyone's Fingerprints To Open Phones
> By Thomas Fox-Brewster
> Oct 16 2016
> <http://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2016/10/16/doj-demands-mass-fingerprint-seizure-to-open-iphones/>
>
> In what’s believed to be an unprecedented attempt to bypass the security of Apple iPhones, or any smartphone that 
> uses fingerprints to unlock, California’s top cops asked to enter a residence and force anyone inside to use their 
> biometric information to open their mobile devices.
>
> FORBES found a court filing, dated May 9 2016, in which the Department of Justice sought to search a Lancaster, 
> California, property. But there was a more remarkable aspect of the search, as pointed out in the memorandum: 
> “authorization to depress the fingerprints and thumbprints of every person who is located at the SUBJECT PREMISES 
> during the execution of the search and who is reasonably believed by law enforcement to be the user of a fingerprint 
> sensor-enabled device that is located at the SUBJECT PREMISES and falls within the scope of the warrant.” The warrant 
> was not available to the public, nor were other documents related to the case.
>
> According to the memorandum, signed off by U.S. attorney for the Central District of California Eileen Decker, the 
> government asked for even more than just fingerprints: “While the government does not know ahead of time the identity 
> of every digital device or fingerprint (or indeed, every other piece of evidence) that it will find in the search, it 
> has demonstrated probable cause that evidence may exist at the search location, and needs the ability to gain access 
> to those devices and maintain that access to search them. For that reason, the warrant authorizes the seizure of 
> ‘passwords, encryption keys, and other access devices that may be necessary to access the device,’” the document read.
>
> Legal experts were shocked at the government’s request. “They want the ability to get a warrant on the assumption 
> that they will learn more after they have a warrant,” said Marina Medvin of Medvin Law. “Essentially, they are 
> seeking to have the ability to convince people to comply by providing their fingerprints to law enforcement under the 
> color of law – because of the fact that they already have a warrant. They want to leverage this warrant to induce 
> compliance by people they decide are suspects later on. This would be an unbelievably audacious abuse of power if it 
> were permitted.”
>
> Jennifer Lynch, senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), added: “It’s not enough for a 
> government to just say we have a warrant to search this house and therefore this person should unlock their phone. 
> The government needs to say specifically what information they expect to find on the phone, how that relates to 
> criminal activity and I would argue they need to set up a way to access only the information that is relevant to the 
> investigation.
>
> “The warrant has to be particular in how it describes the place to be searched and the thing to be seized and limited 
> in scope. That’s why if a government suspects criminal activity to be happening on a property and there are 50 
> apartments in that property they have to specify which apartment and why and what they expect to find there.”
>
> Whilst the DoJ declined to comment, FORBES was able to contact a resident at the property in question, but they 
> refused to provide details on the investigation. They did, however, indicate the warrant was served. “They should 
> have never come to my house,” the person said. (In an attempt to protect the residents’ privacy, FORBES has chosen to 
> censor the address from the memorandum posted below and concealed their name. But the document is public – search 
> hard enough and you’ll find it). “I did not know about it till it was served… my family and I are trying to let this 
> pass over because it was embarrassing to us and should’ve never happened.” They said neither they nor any relatives 
> living at the address had ever been accused of being part of any crime, but declined to offer more information.
>
> “We’ve never seen anything like this,” Lynch added. Indeed, the memorandum has revealed the first known attempt by 
> the government to acquire fingerprints of multiple individuals in a certain location to unlock smartphones.
>
> The document also showed the government isn’t afraid of getting inventive to bypass the security of modern 
> smartphones. Faced with growing technical difficulties of unlocking phones, the government has sought to find new 
> legal measures allowing them easy routes in, hence the All Writs Act order that demanded Apple open the iPhone 5C of 
> San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook. But with Apple refusing to comply with the order, and pushback from the 
> likes of Google and Microsoft, cops are increasingly looking to fingerprints as one option for searching smartphones.
>
> FORBES revealed earlier this year one of the first-known warrants demanding a suspect depress their fingerprints to 
> open an iPhone, filed by Los Angeles police in February. This publication also uncovered a case in May where feds 
> investigating an alleged sex trafficking racket wanted access to a suspect’s iPhone 5S with his fingerprints. Both 
> were ultimately unsuccessful in opening the devices.
>
> [snip]
>
> Dewayne-Net RSS Feed: <http://dewaynenet.wordpress.com/feed/>



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