Court ruling: Police can coerce fingerprint to unlock iPhone

While one might think that this would not be an issue in the wake of the United States Supreme Court ruling that police must obtain a warrant in order to search a cell phone, a protection extended by the Fourth Amendment, this ruling in a lower circuit court in Virginia says that a fingerprint of a suspect is not protected by the Fifth Amendment, which states in part that a person will not “be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself.”



In a ruling passed down by Judge Steven Fucci, a criminal cannot be compelled to disclose any information, such as provide a pass-code ...