Cops take dead man’s smartphone to his corpse in attempt to unlock it | Sunday Observer

Cops take dead man’s smartphone to his corpse in attempt to unlock it

6 May, 2018
Linus Philipps’ smart phone
Linus Philipps’ smart phone

In a very unusual move, police detectives in Largo, Florida, recently went to a local funeral home and located the body of a man named Linus Phillip. The 30-year-old had died days earlier at the hands of a different Largo officer.

The detectives then attempted to use the fingers on Phillip’s body to unlock his own smartphone, which had been recovered from the scene. Their efforts were not successful.

For years, law enforcement officials nationwide have said that they struggle with the so-called “Going Dark” problem - the idea that strong encryption on smartphones is making it significantly more difficult for police to access data held there.

Lawyers said that the Phillip case was troubling, and they all agreed that it’s extremely difficult if not outright impossible for the estate of a dead person to assert an alleged 4th Amendment violation. Or, put another way, dead people have no privacy rights.

“This feels pretty grotesque to have the cops taking a person who is deceased, to unlock their phone,” Blake Reid, a law professor at the University of Colorado, said.

-arstechnica.com

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