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Comment by sokoloff | Hacker News Reader

> The FBI ended up in possession of the shooter's iPhone during the investigation but was unable to unlock the device, as the attacker had been killed and therefore could not be compelled to share his PIN.

Is it not the case that he couldn't be legally compelled to share his PIN even if he were alive?

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Make non-compliance a civil offense, subject to a daily penalty. Simply financially ruin people. Economic coercion is still coercion. And you don't have the same right to an attorney or a jury trial. And you can be found partially liable for consequences from non-compliance.

Criminal law is more binary, and a far stronger burden of proof on the claiming party, the government.

This is already the case in many states when it comes to vehicular traffic laws. Most speeding is a civil offense, no right to plea bargain, or jury trial. It only becomes criminal after a certain speed (careless or wreckless), and becomes criminal after a certain amount and time for the unpaid fine.

It's what happens when people in a democracy aren't paying attention to state and local law making.

No one can force your to share information. Let's say your PIN code is 1324, and you suffer from stress induced transposia (just made that up). Every time you are asked to say or share your PIN code, you get stresses & use 1234, even though you meant to use 1324. There's no way make you say the correct PIN code. In a more realistic example, what are you going to do to someone who simply forgot their PIN code?

Or, more interestingly in the US, you'll say "I please the fifth," and "I want to speak to my lawyer" and it won't be an issue.

>what are you going to do to someone who simply forgot their PIN code?

Put them in jail indefinitely, apparently.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/man-jailed-indef...

> In deciding against Rawls, the court of appeals found that the constitutional rights against being compelled to testify against oneself were not being breached. That's because the appeals court, like the police, agreed that the presence of XXXXXXXXXX on his drives was a "foregone conclusion." The Fifth Amendment, at its most basic level, protects suspects from being forced to disclose incriminating evidence. In this instance, however, the authorities said they already know there's XXXXXXXXXX on the drives, so Rawls' constitutional rights aren't compromised.

> ""Forensic examination also disclosed that Doe [Rawls] had downloaded thousands of files known by their "hash" values to be XXXXXXXXXX. The files, however, were not on the Mac Pro, but instead had been stored on the encrypted external hard drives. Accordingly, the files themselves could not be accessed.""

A good guess can figure out what I've redacted.

> foregone conclusion

If it's a foregone conclusion they can start a trial, if it's not they should release him.

They cannot compel you to divulge a password, but they can mandate a thumb unlock, just as while they cannot compel you to divulge a safe combination, they can mandate you give them a key.

Information versus material.

> They cannot compel you to divulge a password, but they can mandate a thumb unlock

This is an excellent point. That is why do I not use biometrics on my personal devices. I honestly don't have anything to hide, but I also have no desire to give people the idea that it's going to be easy to fish through my personal stuff.

You probably cannot be compelled to say what your password is,but you can be compelled to place your finger on the fingerprint scanner, provide retna scans, and provide other biometric data to unlock encryption. The difference being that you cannot be compelled to reveal information you have in your own mind. The rest of your body, however, is fair game.

investigators used to look further when they hit a dead end. now it seems they just whine to congress.

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