Japan Introduces Forced Facial Recognition to Unlock Smartphones in Investigations Amid Overreach Concerns

Japanese police have introduced an investigative method where they obtain a court warrant to forcibly expose a suspect's eyes and face to a smartphone to unlock it.

This measure is designed to counter new evidence-destruction methods, such as remote data deletion, but concerns are rising that forcing individuals to expose their biometric information goes too far.

According to the Asahi Shimbun on August 12, Japanese police have begun utilizing "physical inspection warrants" issued by courts to unlock suspects' smartphones.

The Osaka Prefectural Police used a physical inspection warrant to unlock smartphones during a search and seizure operation targeting members of "Natural," an illegal employment placement ring.

The warrant explicitly states, "Instruct the suspect to unlock the device, and if they refuse, hold their face 20 to 50 centimeters away from the smartphone and keep it still for about one second."

The app developed by Natural allows for the remote deletion of exchanged information. Police used the physical inspection warrant to swiftly block this and secure crime-related data stored on the smartphones.

While physical inspection warrants have traditionally been issued mainly to check for injection marks in drug cases or to examine suspects' injuries in assault cases, there has been no previous record of such warrants being used to unlock smartphones.

However, this investigation method does not appear to have spread across the entire police force.

A senior National Police Agency official explained to the Asahi Shimbun, "Because courts only issue such warrants for highly organized cases with a high risk of evidence destruction, they are not easy to utilize."

The police's caution regarding forced facial recognition stems from concerns that forcing biometric authentication against a suspect's will constitutes excessive investigation.

Daisuke Midori, a professor at the Faculty of Law at Hitotsubashi University, pointed out, "While we cannot say the warrant itself is problematic, there is a high risk that it exceeds the limits of the use of force accepted by social norms."

According to the Asahi Shimbun, a federal court in the United States has also ruled that law enforcement authorities acquiring smartphone information through forced biometric authentication is unconstitutional.

There is also the issue that it is difficult to enforce biometric authentication if a suspect refuses.

The process of forcing facial recognition could involve physical contact, potentially sparking controversy over the excessive exercise of public power.

A police officer in the Kansai region said, "Even if facial recognition is authorized by the warrant, the phone cannot be unlocked if the suspect closes their eyelids. Forcibly opening someone's eyes is out of the question."

(Photo: Yonhap News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.