Norwegian police will force a drug dealer to unlock the iPhone with a fingerprint

- How can you remove a plaster from a person without being noticed?
- Can. I do not know how they will act, but a person can be stunned, watered, put to sleep. In general - with an unfeeling body. Finally, with a corpse!
“From whose ... corpse?”
- But I am sure that this will not happen.
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When Apple introduced an advanced fingerprint authentication method on a smartphone, some paranoids spoke in the sense that the new technology only weakens protection.
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Judge for yourself: an attacker can peek at the password / pincode with a very low probability - pick it up, but getting a fingerprint is much easier. First, it can be removed from the object that the victim touched (for example, a glass or a bottle). Secondly, it can be removed from the victim! As they say, a person can be “stunned, drunk, put to sleep” and so on.

The latest case in Norway confirms that Touch ID can hardly be considered as a serious protection. The District Court of Nordhordland authorized the local police to unlock the iPhone, owned by a 27-year-old drug suspect, using a Touch ID sensor.

Local media publish the details of this story. The accused has already admitted his guilt and confessed to storing the prohibited substance.

The court made a decision on the grounds that information from the smartphone can give a tip where the suspect purchased the drug, that is, to find a supplier.

If a guy had a password, then the police would not have been able to get it in a legal way, that is, without torture. But to get a fingerprint for them is probably not difficult (see the quote from the movie "The Diamond Hand").

The district court ruled that police officers "have the right to make the defendant put his thumb on his smartphone."

It is not entirely clear from media reports whether the court and the police are aware that the Touch ID system provides for additionally entering an access code after 48 hours of inactivity or three unsuccessful attempts to scan a fingerprint. The suspect was detained on January 25, so that 48 hours have already passed, and how will they get the access code in this case?

But you still need to keep in mind that Touch ID is only an auxiliary method of protection that you cannot fully rely on.