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FBI Couldn’t Get into WaPo Reporter’s iPhone Because It Had Lockdown Mode Enabled (www.404media.co)
submitted 1 day ago by tonytins@pawb.social to c/technology@lemmy.world
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The FBI has been unable to access a Washington Post reporter’s seized iPhone because it was in Lockdown Mode, a sometimes overlooked feature that makes iPhones broadly more secure, according to recently filed court records.

The court record shows what devices and data the FBI was able to ultimately access, and which devices it could not, after raiding the home of the reporter, Hannah Natanson, in January as part of an investigation into leaks of classified information. It also provides rare insight into the apparent effectiveness of Lockdown Mode, or at least how effective it might be before the FBI may try other techniques to access the device.

“Because the iPhone was in Lockdown mode, CART could not extract that device,” the court record reads, referring to the FBI’s Computer Analysis Response Team, a unit focused on performing forensic analyses of seized devices. The document is written by the government, and is opposing the return of Natanson’s devices.

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[-] dev_null@lemmy.ml 9 points 7 hours ago

Is this an advertisement? Sure, yes. The government can get into any phone? No.

[-] Zamboni_Driver@lemmy.ca 5 points 6 hours ago

Any iPhone? Almost certainly.

[-] floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 6 hours ago

Virtually any phone I would say, yeah. Either by rubberhose cryptanalysis or by sheer time, money, and tools, they most likely can.

[-] dev_null@lemmy.ml 3 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

So "any phone" turned into "virtually any phone", and the owner needs to be alive and apprehended, and then they "most likely" can, maybe.

See, I mostly agree with what you said. But you can see how we have moved the goalpost away from "there is no phone the government cannot get into", to "the government can get into most phones", which is quite a different statement.

[-] floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

I am not moving goalposts or making different statements, I'm not the user you were replying to.

I also mostly agree with you, but my angle is that the difference between "the government can get into virtually any phone" and "the government can get into most phones" is that the latter makes it seem like you can be "smart/knowledgeable enough" to avoid that, and that's untrue. You should assume everything you keep on your phone can be extracted because of the nature of smartphone manufacturers, the supply chain etc, but I do not believe no phone can't be broken into like OP was saying, thus "virtually any phone" seems fitting.

[-] dev_null@lemmy.ml 1 points 4 hours ago

I get what you are saying but I'm seeing this from a different perspective.

The first statement is saying "there is nothing you can do". You shouldn't care about your privacy, you shouldn't try to be careful, you shouldn't fight for yourself. The government is all powerful and you should accept your fate. That's why I don't like these sweeping absolute statements. They promote giving up.

The other is "this is hard, but it's possible to win". And sure, you probably won't win if the government is specifically targeting you and sending agents with rubber hoses against you. But in all likelihood they aren't. And there are many things you can do to prevent actual passive surveillance affecting you.

[-] floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 hours ago

I am not saying privacy is a lost cause, I fully agree with you on your approach. But there's a big difference between minimizing your footprint to avoid passive surveillance, and the FBI having your phone

this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2026
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