14 DAY TRIAL // It’s the password-protected iPhone saga time again, as a man accused of child abuse has been jailed for 180 days after refusing to give the police the correct passcode to unlock his smartphone.
41-year-old Christopher Wheeler claims he has already provided the police with the passcode to his iPhone, but investigators claim it’s not correct and repeated attempts to unlock the device could lead to the complete removal of the data beyond the point where it can be recovered.
No details regarding the iPhone model or the iOS version that the device was running were provided.
Investigators believe that the iPhone might store incriminatory evidence of the alleged injuries that the man caused to his daughter, but without the passcode, it’s impossible to break into the phone and access the photo gallery. The police have already obtained a search warrant for the iPhone, but the owner needs to provide the passcode himself.
The password-protected iPhone dilemma
Whether iPhone owners should disclose their passwords or not is the subject of several legal disputes in the United States, with some courts ruling that phone passcodes are protected by the 5th Amendment, while others forced suspects to unlock their devices.
A Virginia District Court, for example, ruled in 2014 that the 5th Amendment also covers phone passwords, while a Florida court decided otherwise. A ruling from the Supreme Court is still pending, so in Florida police can ask owners to disclose their device passwords when a warrant is issued.
iPhone maker Apple itself was involved in a legal dispute regarding the passcode of one of its devices, after the FBI required the company to break into the smartphone used by one of the San Bernardino terrorists in late 2015.
Apple refused to break into the device, with the FBI eventually turning to an unnamed group of hackers who managed to extract the data from the phone. The software used for brute-forcing the device was then said to allow the FBI to unlock more passcode-protected iPhones, but information in this regard remains very contradictory, as neither the bureau nor Apple confirmed or denied it.
