An appeals court ruling with limited reach allows cops to force suspects to unlock their phones using fingerprint or facial recognition.
Maybe you were too busy last week following the bill, now signed into law by President Joe Biden, that could result in TikTok getting banned in the U.S. But it turns out that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in California ruled that the state highway patrol acted legally when it forced a suspect to unlock his phone using the device’s fingerprint scanner. Per Gizmodo, you might not have heard about this because the ruling does not apply to all smartphone users nationwide.
If you worry about the police finding out about something illegal you’ve done by going through your phone, you might want to ditch the biometrics such as the fingerprint scanner or facial recognition to unlock your phone and stick to using a passcode.
