The Electronic Frontier Foundation is celebrating iOS 11’s so-called ‘cop button’ feature that allows users to tap the home or power button five times to disable biometric authentication and require a passcode for phone access.
In a post on its blog, the privacy advocacy group asserts that despite “speculation that this feature is intended to defeat law enforcement… it is, at its core, a common-sense security feature” that can thwart muggers, domestic abusers, anyone else who might try to compel a user to unlock their device. Nevertheless, the EFF pays special tribute to the ‘constitutional bonus’ that this system offers in helping to protect users’ Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination. American courts have long prevented police from compelling suspects to provide their passcodes, but a recent ruling has suggested that the same protections don’t apply to biometric unlocking systems like the iPhone’s Touch ID. Now, by letting users quickly disable such mechanisms, iOS 11 helps them to ensure their information is protected against searches by law enforcement authorities.
The EFF focuses on this feature’s implementation on the iPhone 8, which will retain Touch ID fingerprint scanning; but it’s worth noting that the feature is also available on the iPhone X. That device’s use of facial recognition for user authentication has prompted some concern among consumers that they could easily be forced by others to unlock their phones, but the ‘cop button’ could help to prevent such incidents, as will an ‘attention aware’ feature that requires the user to look directly at the phone in order to unlock it.
Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation
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September 15, 2017 – by Alex Perala
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