If you’ve ever imagined a scenario where police demand you unlock your phone and thought “Over my dead body!” — we have bad news for you. Here in our absurd dystopian future, having a phone means that upon your demise you could find yourself participating — limp and lifeless — in a legal search and seizure of your own digital property.
Police in Largo, Florida recently tried to use a dead man’s finger to open his phone. This was to the complete astonishment of his family and probably also staff at the Sylvan Abbey Funeral Home. Detectives just rolled right in with Linus F. Phillip’s phone and asked staff where his corpse was. They then attempted to unlock his phone by pressing his hands and fingers on to the fingerprint sensor.
The dead man’s fiance Victoria Armstrong told press, “I just felt so disrespected and violated.”
Mr. Phillip, an unarmed black man, was shot and killed outside a gas station after police claimed he tried to drive away during a search. His death was ruled a “justifiable homicide.” His family does not trust the investigation into his death.
“They were trying to open up that cellphone using a dead man’s finger,” the family’s attorney, John Trevena said. “That’s disgusting beyond words.”
We are angry, frustrated, and in pain because of the violence and murder of Black people by the police because of racism. We are in the fight AGAINST RACISM. George Floyd was murdered, his life stolen. The Adafruit teams have specific actions we’ve done, are doing, and will do together as a company and culture. We are asking the Adafruit community to get involved and share what you are doing. The Adafruit teams will not settle for a hash tag, a Tweet, or an icon change. We will work on real change, and that requires real action and real work together. That is what we will do each day, each month, each year – we will hold ourselves accountable and publish our collective efforts, partnerships, activism, donations, openly and publicly. Our blog and social media platforms will be utilized in actionable ways. Join us and the anti-racist efforts working to end police brutality, reform the criminal justice system, and dismantle the many other forms of systemic racism at work in this country, read more @ adafruit.com/blacklivesmatter
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
