Jose Pagliery from CNN wrote a piece about obtaining warrants for people’s fingerprints to unlock iPhones.  Here’s an excerpt of the article in which David Markus is quoted:

Frucci’s ruling relies on a Supreme Court ruling that police can indeed obtain your fingerprint, photo, height — or even your blood. On the other hand, giving up your password is like being forced to speak against yourself, which violates the Fifth Amendment.

It’s an odd split in logic, because fingerprints and passcodes now do the same thing: unlock information.

“Sometimes the law gets too cute. We shouldn’t leave common sense out of the equation,” said David Oscar Markus, a high-profile defense attorney in Miami. “The process is the same thing. You’re getting access to someone’s most private information by forcing someone to give you the key.”

Broccoletti, the lawyer in the Virginia case, said, “It’s going to be our job to educate the judges. A print isn’t just a print.”

Susan Brenner, a University of Dayton law professor who focuses on technology, explained why.

“By putting my finger on the reader, I effectively ‘testify’ that this is my laptop — or I have control over the laptop that belongs to someone else. And by unlocking the data, I also effectively ‘testify’ that this is my data,” she said.