French court: refusing to disclose mobile passcode to law enforcement is a crime
It seems to me this English article does not reflect the actual decision of the court in French.<p>See judgment here and attached PDF (in French) <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.courdecassation.fr&#x2F;toutes-les-actualites&#x2F;2022&#x2F;11&#x2F;07&#x2F;code-de-deverrouillage-dun-ecran-de-telephone-et-cryptologie" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.courdecassation.fr&#x2F;toutes-les-actualites&#x2F;2022&#x2F;11...</a><p>The case was a person who was arrested for drug possession and trafficking, they were requested to give their passcode to unlock 2 phones allegedly used for trafficking, they refused then were further charged for not giving their password.<p>1) 15th May 2018 - First court ruled on drug trafficking but rejected the charges for not giving the passcode to unlock the phone, considering that a screen passcode is not a cryptographic mean to make the data on the phone unreadable or inaccessible.<p>2) 11th July 2019 - Escalated to the court of Appeal, same result.<p>3) 13th October 2020 - Escalated to the cour de cassation, who ruled that the law was incorrectly applied and sent back the case to the court. The cour de cassation doesn&#x27;t rule cases, it only rules on whether a specific law was correctly applied by the court. (A decision of the court de cassation, like this one, explains how a law is meant to be interpreted and applied by the courts).<p>4) 20th April 2021 - The court of Appeal, repeated the initial result (home screen passcode is not a cryptographic mean to protect data) and dismissed the charges AGAIN.<p>5) Yesterday - Escalated to the cour de cassation AGAIN, who ruled that the law was incorrectly applied AGAIN, and sent back the case to the court AGAIN.<p>6) Future - This is pending another trial, from the court of appeal.<p>My understanding of the cour de cassation explanations, the home screen may or may not constitute a cryptographic mean to make the data unreadable or inaccessible, that depends on the phone. The court needs to rule on whether it is for that specific phone in that specific case.<p>For the HN audience who is technical and some of you actually make the phones. Most modern phones including all Apple and most Android have cryptographic means to protect all the data on the phone, it&#x27;s effectively not possible to access contacts, messages, photos, storage, etc without having the home screen password. (Please consider that historically, it was often possible to take out the sim card or the storage SD card or use other tools to read the content of the phone, but not anymore)<p>My understanding is that the next ruling will have to consider whether these technical protections render the data inaccessible to the police. If yes and the data is deemed required for a criminal investigation, the suspect is required by law to disclose their passcode, or risk up to 3 year of prison and 270 000 euros.