Why can't your iPhone take the 5th?

Rene Ritchie

Should our phones have the right to remain silent? To plead the 5th?

There’s doctor-patient privilege, attorney-client privilege, clergy-penitent privilege, and spousal privilege.

To the best of my understanding, and with all the appropriate caveats and limits of scope, in many jurisdictions, our doctors, therapists, lawyers, priests, pastors, husbands, and wives, cannot be compelled to testify or provide evidence against us.

But our phones, which nowadays contain health, legal, location, and deeply personal data — beyond any of our real-world relationships — our phones, which have pretty much become extensions of our memory, our knowledge, our senses, to the point where they’re indistinguishable from external cybernetics… Our phones have no such protection. There’s just no digital device equivalent to that privilege. No right for our phones to remain silent.

They can and will be used against us. But as the external cybernetics become internal, as the computers move from our phones and watches and earbuds to our bodies and brains... does that need to change?s

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.