US police admit unlocking iPhones via Touch ID with fingers of dead people

Smartphones have become such an intrinsic part of life in society that they are already arousing discussions in spheres that go well beyond their usual scope. Even the limits of the law and legal agents are on the agenda when it comes to the small, ultra-powerful gadgets we carry with us: how acceptable is it, say, that a policeman forces us to unlock our device so that he can examine it?

Where is the line between security and privacy invasion?

This is a question that has been going on for a long time, and now, a report from Forbes is contributing to add new information in the midst of this cacophony of opinions: American police confirmed that they regularly uses corpse fingers to unlock your iPhones via Touch ID.

The story brings a series of cases in which police forces found bodies at crime scenes and unlocked their devices with biometric identification; according to agents heard, such a common practice is widely used, for example, in cases of people killed by an overdose investigating the victim's iPhone usually leads the police to contact a dealer or other key part of the case.

A particularly emblematic case was that of Abdul Razak Ali Artan, a terrorist who invaded the Ohio State University campus with a car and attacked students and teachers with a knife. Artan was killed by a police officer and the FBI tried to unlock his iPhone via Touch ID, but he came face to face with the wall. The model was an iPhone 5, without the biometric unlocking tool. Only after sending the device to a forensic science lab (probably Cellebrite, although the matter does not name names) was the smartphone unlocked and the agency was able to determine the criminal's connections with ISIS.

All this history to illustrate the point that, for police forces, it is much simpler, cheaper and faster to pick up the finger of a corpse and unlock your iPhone in search of clues than to send it to a specialized firm, spend a note and wait weeks for discoveries. And as much as the act sounds questionable from an ethical point of view, under American law there is nothing wrong with it: according to lawyers heard by the Forbes, a person after death is not entitled to privacy and police officers do not need a warrant to exploit his phone, unless he has more than one owner (and the other person is alive).

There is still no information as to whether the police used the same method to unlock iPhone X from a corpse via Face ID in fact, no one knows if this is even possible considering the technology used by Apple for its facial unlocking method (and I suspect that it did not we have no candidate willing to try). However, researcher Marc Rogers, from Cloudflare, suggests that Face ID can indeed be used with the face of a dead person, if they only have one eye still open.

In short: it is very unlikely to happen, but if you have very scared of the chance of dying and having your iPhone information accessed, it may be a good idea not to leave Touch ID or Face ID enabled. Not wanting to hold on to anyone, but what, n

via 9to5Mac