There are slippery slopes and then there are treacherous cliffs

The Texas-based public defender at Injustice Anywhere thinks through how HB 2337, if enacted as approved yesterday by the Texas House, might play out in court when the government has accessed biometric-password-protected computer data:

I can just see the government's arguments in response to a motion to suppress now. "Your honor, there could be no reasonable expectation of privacy if the passwords for the records were biometric data the defendant should have known was already in possession of the State." And since there's no reasonable expectation of privacy, there's no search. No search, no need for a warrant.

Bada Bing, Bada Boom. That's about the size of it. This is a terrible bill. There are about ten good reasons to oppose it. But giving law enforcement free access to personal biometric computer passwords has to rank near the top of the list.