Biometric encryption of smartphones: a charted ship in the ocean of adversarial system?

Abstract

India has recently been flooded with smartphones having features of biometric encryption that allows users to encrypt the data on their devices using their biometric features, such as finger impressions or iris patterns. This technology assures users of precluding impermissible intrusions into their private data. However, this idea behind biometric encryption has witnessed critical considerations in the recent past, when Courts of various jurisdictions in the USA were faced with the issue of whether an investigating agency has the power to unlock such smartphones by compelling an accused to depress his fingerprints on the touch ID of the same. The courts have tried to strike a balance between the competing interests of the State and of the accused. While on the one side is the consideration that such power to the investigating agencies are essential for combating crime, on the other, there are the individualistic fundamental rights of the accused. The courts have weighed the prospective impact of giving the investigating agency the said power against an accused’s fundamental rights against self-incrimination, and privacy. This article, after analysing these judgments, endeavours to provide answers to the questions that Indian Courts might face in future concerning search and seizure of smartphones and its implications on the fundamental rights of an accused. This discussion becomes important especially due to the absence of any judicial pronouncements on the issue in India and more so, because even existing pronouncements by the courts in the USA have been quite contradictory.