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Comment by john_the_writer | Hacker News Reader

The phone should have two fingerprint sets. One will unlock, one will super lock. User your left finger for super locking, and right for unlock. then when the cops mash your thumb it super locks it, and after that mashing won't work.

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Also, police also cannot demand that you tell them which finger is the "correct" one, for the same reasons they can't demand that you tell them the "correct" password.

In both cases the question can be considered forcing you to admit ownership of some evidence, and thus (unconstitutionally) forcing you to testify against yourself.

Except now the cops know that 1) this is indeed your phone and 2) you have just tampered with evidence and 3) that evidence is juicy

If there is no indication about what happened beyond "could not unlock with this finger", that should be hard to figure out, right?

It's not tampering if nothing is erased, and if the only action is to disable biometric identification going forward.

Until they catch on to this dual functionality and charge you with obstructing an investigation.

You mean something that would actually hold up in a court of law? Can you expand on the what those literal charges would be, and what legal criteria has been met?

I'm skeptical because that kind of lockout has perfectly innocent applications, the same way that my laptop might throttle password attempts after too many failures.

How did you obstruct? The cop put your finger on the phone and you configured this before there was an investigation.

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