Can Police Demand Your Phone Password In Canada?

You’ve been arrested, and the police have lawfully, that’s legally seized your cell phone. Now they’re demanding your password. “Give us your password. We want to open your phone.” What are your rights here? Can you refuse? Can they ask that question? What should you do in this situation? Welcome back to the Kruse Law Firm YouTube channel, where we answer complex questions in plain, simple language, do the police have a right to demand your password? 

Great question. With this question, you have to go back to the answers, and it’s in our Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. First of all, under Section 7, you have a right to remain silent, right just life, liberty and security. Under Section 8 of the charter, you’re to be free from unreasonable search and seizure, and them demanding your password both breaches your right to remain silent and breaches your right to be secure from unreasonable search and seizure. So that’s a simple answer. You can say no, absolutely, they don’t have the right to that. 

Now the police can obviously seize your cell phone in various situations, if they have reasonable, probable grounds and they want to get a warrant to seize it, they can do that. And also they can seize it as an incident to arrest. When you’re arrested, say, for shoplifting, and they process you at the station or impaired driving, they’re going to seize your cell phone, but you don’t have to give them your password if they ask you that, what you should say in my submission to is, look, “I’m remaining silent. I want to speak to a lawyer.” They have to give you a right to lawyer upon arrest to speak to as well. That’s the simple answer to that. They don’t have a right. Now, the police do have forensic tools like Cellebrite software that typically will allow them to unlock a phone, but sometimes it’s failed. Sometimes they can’t, but usually it does so, but you don’t have to help them. You have a right to remain silent. You don’t have to give them evidence against you. That’s very important, okay, section 7 and 8 of the Charter. Now, in other situations, the police are going to, they might keep demanding it. Don’t listen to them. Just say, I want to speak to a lawyer. So that’s the very clear and simple answer to that question. Now in these particular situations, of course, your phone contains your life, but you don’t have to unlock your life for the police. 

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