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Well it didn’t wipe itself, which is a big and likely legally important distinction. He wiped it.
Both arguments make sense, it being protecting privacy and it destroying evidence, so it will be fascinating to see what the ruling is and the reasoning behind it.
Evidence of what?
What crime did this person commit that you needed the "evidence" on his phone?
This is as bullshit as seeing "resisting arrest" being the only conviction. You didn't have a legitimate reason to arrest, or you wouldn't have gone with "resisting", you would have convicted for that reason. If they were probably doing something illegal, then the conviction should be simple and easy, not "well we couldn't get the primary charges to stick, but when we broke his hand he fell, so he clearly resisted arrest and that's why he's in jail"
It's scare tactics. This particular case will get thrown out because you simply can't have "evidence" with being a part of an official investigation.
So they'll make a big stink about it. The poor bastard will be dragged through the legal system to great fanfare. The case will be tossed SILENTLY...with or without a counter suit and settlement for the victim.
No one will report on the settlement or the case being tossed because the purpose was never to prosecute, it's to normalize the idea in people's minds that the authorities can do whatever they want, so don't fight.
It'll get dropped, but the poor bastard they're persecuting won't get a settlement. The government will have immunity.
used to be they'd have to prove that it was evidence in order to say it was evidence that was destroyed
now they can just point at you and call you "terrorist," and that's that, nothing you can do
welcome to fascism
For me, it's privacy.
But, two things are true: a. they shouldn’t be compelled to unlock their phone, even with a warrant. Like, unlock it yourself, you lazy, cowardly fascist and b. customs officials have legally been given the authority to confiscate and go through your shit whether or not we agree or like it.
The risk absolutely pales in comparison to the privacy benefits (and the risk of abuses by law enforcement, that were already seeing bear out).
In the USA you supposedly have a right against self-incrimination under the 5th Amendment.
I don't see how being asked to provide your private unlock code or password so that the pigs can trawl your phone just fishing for anything incriminating (or just add something incriminating) would be anything other than "self-incrimination". You should have a right to tell them to fuck off, and this has never been tested by the supreme court.
"the constitutional right of a person to refuse to answer questions or otherwise give testimony against himself".
The Supreme Court of the United States has held that "a witness may have a reasonable fear of prosecution and yet be innocent of any wrongdoing. The privilege serves to protect the innocent who otherwise might be ensnared by ambiguous circumstances."
However, the conservative Roberts SC has already indicated their pleasure in weakening this protection - there's a good chance they'd weaken it more, so long as it's for a conservative cause.
Professor James Joseph Duane of the Regent University School of Law argues that the Supreme Court, in a 5–4 decision in Salinas v. Texas,[45] significantly weakened the privilege, saying "your choice to use the Fifth Amendment privilege can be used against you at trial depending exactly how and where you do it."[46]
This country is just insane, china is literally a communist dictatorship and they have a fraction of people in prison that we do, per capita the disparity is even crazier.
I just will never understand how we can pretend to be a free country and we literally have more citizens imprisoned than any other country, by far. By every objective measure we are the policiest police state to have ever existed. You're just a much freer human being in any other country in the world except maybe el salvador i think is the only country with a higher imprisonment rate.
Maybe they should add a feature where instead of completely erasing some files, it would just hide certain files when an alternative pin-code is inputted. Would work against these kind of ass-hats pretending to be police to look at your photos.
Problem is if it's merely hidden they can seize the phone and get the data out somehow.
Not in a temporary stop like that. They'd have to hold onto it for years until an exploit came out.
I think that is a feature, at least for some phone OSes. Almost like a dual boot situation
Edit: I'm now thinking even the "wipe" feature as used wouldn't have raised an eyebrow if the phone didn't appear to restart. Maybe they can make it seem to unlock normally even when the distress code is used?
