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Comment by jsilence | Hacker News Reader

If the government has my fingerprints, would they be allowed to use them to unlock the confiscated phone?

Might explain why in Germany s of lately you have your fingerprints taken when getting your personal ID (Personalausweis).

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I'd be very surprised if evidence obtained this way would be admissible at a trial. But if you want to be safe, use another finger for your Id card than for your phone...

It is. Germany has no 'fruit of the poison tree' principle. Police can use whatever no matter how it was obtained.

Are you sure? Because in neighboring Czechia, a court can definitely rule evidence inadmissible if its gathering was legally unsound.

For example, call recordings that were obtained without lawful permission can be thrown out and actually currently were in a highly visible case.

Well, according to the wikipedia article, it goes to the extent that even if you've got evidence through, say, coercion, while that evidence would be invalid, you could use that information so obtained to collect further valid evidence, or even just get the suspect to repeat the previous statements (not under coercion) then resubmit it.

But I've mostly just got this from my wife complaining about it. There's very little structurally in place to prevent the police from abusing their power in germany, and when it comes to evidence collection, they are definitely incentivized to do so.

Thank you for detailing this!

Ah... in South Africa they print all n fingers (however many you have.)

10 fingers, 10 attempts before wipe. Better hope there's no misreads.

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