FBI stymied by Apple's Lockdown Mode after seizing journalist's iPhone | Hacker News Reader

FBI stymied by Apple's Lockdown Mode after seizing journalist's iPhone

arstechnica.com

17 pointsalwillis14 comments

I think it’s absolutely ridiculous that someone can be compelled to give up their biometric login, when a password is off limits. It feels like this goes against the spirit of the 5th amendment.

This is especially true as the industry pushes more and more toward Passkeys and other passwordless means of login, which rely more and more on biometrics.

Definitely not a coincidence.

Oh we do end-to-end encrypt everything for your safety, see our article on the unbreakable protocol... but you can unlock everything with this 4 digit windows hello pin, unlimited retries, you are mandatory to define the pin, if you want to use high security features... Totally not a backdoor.

Apple is more principled on this front definitely.

Isn’t a pin considered a password and not required to be given up, unlike a fingerprint or Face ID?

But a 4 digit PIN with unlimited retries can be brute forced.

Replacing a password with a 4 digit PIN is less secure. If a user wanted a 4 character password, they’d make a 4 character password. Forcing the creation doesn’t make much sense on a desktop.

Idea: canary fingers. You register a few digits that wipe filesystem keys from memory so that no further biometrics can be used. It’s like what happens when you hold the power button on an iphone, but with a fun russian roulette twist.

If she'd held her finger on the reader long enough wouldn't it have force powered down the mac? (from the article, they held her finger on the reader. Unlike the phone, this did unlock the mac)

I think touching it to read a fingerprint doesn't count as pressing the button, which requires pressure.

Even Europe has become authoritarian these days. Specially UK. I'm praying for the world

UK was always authoritarian. Just look at their extensive CCTV Operations they put up even 10 or 20 years ago.

To us Europeans it has always been a "US Lite Version"

The judge also blocked the FBI from reading any of the data they found, a week ago! https://www.cbsnews.com/news/judge-blocks-doj-from-searching...

And thank the stars! This is incredibly chilling deeply disturbing an event to have happened at all. Raiding journalists like this is wild.

The judge is pretty pissed that the FBI for not telling them how illegal this search was in the first place. https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/20/politics/judge-rips-washingto...

It's incredible what a spineless weak willed authoritarian group of losers are running things now. Zero spine, just lawless pathetic intimidation at every turn. What shrill animals.

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