INTERESTING COMPUTER SECURITY NEWS: Woman ordered to provide her fingerprint to unlock seized iPhone.

Under the Constitution, criminal defendants have the right not to testify against themselves — and providing a passcode could be considered testimonial. However, being compelled to give up something physiological or biometric (such as blood, DNA sample, fingerprint or otherwise), is not.

As the Times reports, Paytsar Bkhchadzhyan was ordered by a federal judge to provide her fingerprint on February 25, and the warrant was executed and unsealed on March 15.

Suspect jailed indefinitely for refusing to decrypt hard drives.

A Philadelphia man suspected of possessing child pornography has been in jail for seven months and counting after being found in contempt of a court order demanding that he decrypt two password-protected hard drives.

The suspect, a former Philadelphia Police Department sergeant, has not been charged with any child porn crimes. Instead, he remains indefinitely imprisoned in Philadelphia’s Federal Detention Center for refusing to unlock two drives encrypted with Apple’s FileVault software in a case that once again highlights the extent to which the authorities are going to crack encrypted devices. The man is to remain jailed “until such time that he fully complies” with the decryption order.

author: Matthew