France: refusing to give your phone code to the authorities is a crime
A French policewoman with a member of staff at a bar in Paris on August 12, 2021. AFP - BERTRAND GUAY
Text by: RFI Follow
1 min
In France, refusing to give your phone code to the judicial authorities is a crime.
The Court of Cassation decided this Monday, November 7, 2022 this thorny question which gave rise to different interpretations according to the judicial authorities.
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At the origin of this decision of the Court of Cassation, there is a case of drugs.
A man arrested in possession of cannabis refuses, while in police custody, to give the codes of his two smartphones, which may have been used for trafficking.
Prosecuted for possession of narcotics, and for having refused to unlock his telephones, he will be acquitted of this last offense by the Criminal Court of Lille, then by the Court of Appeal of Douai, two jurisdictions which then explain that a code does not is not "
a secret convention for decrypting a means of cryptology
", an expression appearing in the Penal Code, because it is not used to decrypt data, but just to unlock a screen.
An erroneous reasoning, therefore, considers the Court of Cassation, which explains that for the iPhone in question, as is the case with most mobile phones today, "
the activation of the code has the effect of clarifying the encrypted data that the device contains or to which it gives access
”.
The defendant will therefore have to be retried for not having given his mobile phone code.
He faces three years in prison and a fine of 270,000 euros.
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