News Insights: New Jersey’s top court: Defendant must share phone passcodes

The Supreme Court of New Jersey ruled a defendant must turn over the passcodes for his two phones in response to a search warrant, opening the way for law enforcement to compel other defendants in the state to do the same

News Insights:

Lecio DePaula Jr., director of data privacy at KnowBe4, provided the following comments:

“As we can see by the recent trend of court rulings, the constitutional protection against self-incrimination in the technological era is slowly eroding. If the increase in the government’s power to search personal devices continues to go unchecked, it will no longer be safe to assume that your data stored on a personal device will remain private. However, certain states such as Indiana and Florida have ruled in the opposite directions, further bolstering the privacy protections for individuals in those states. It will be interesting to see how further cases will be handled when the devices cannot only be unlocked by a passcode, but only by biometrics such as a fingerprint or facial recognition.”