If you’ve been accused of a white-collar crime, such as a financial crime, the police may be interested in searching your phone. They may believe that you have text messages or voicemail messages that could offer incriminating evidence in the case. They may also be interested in looking at pictures, videos, email messages or the history of sites you visited through a browser or a social media app.
However, your phone is your personal property, and you may not want to unlock the device so that the police can look at its contents. Can they force you to do so? If an officer tells you to use your fingerprint or a passcode to open the device, do you have to comply?
Did they get a search warrant?
In most cases, the answer is no, you do not have to do what the police are asking. They can’t force you to unlock your phone.
However, what they can do is get a search warrant. This is a court order that you have to follow. If the police do get a warrant, then they can require you to unlock your phone so that they can search for evidence.
It’s also worth considering that digital evidence in the modern day is not always just stored on a device. For instance, if police officers want to look at a history of direct messages that you sent to other social media users, they may be able to issue a search warrant to those users or to the tech company in charge of the data. If pictures or videos are saved on cloud servers, police may be able to use a search warrant to access those servers. In this sense, they may still have the ability to get evidence, even if you never unlock your phone at all.
These types of searches can be very complex, and technology is always changing and evolving. If you are facing legal charges, be sure you know what defense options you have.