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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

+security

The FBI used a suspect's face to unlock his iPhone in Ohio case [theverge.com]

When Apple debuted Face ID with the iPhone X last year, it raised an interesting legal question: can you be compelled to unlock your phone by looking at it? In an apparent first, Forbes reports [forbes.com] that the FBI got a suspect to unlock his phone during a raid in August.

In August, the FBI raided the home of Grant Michalski, looking for evidence that he had sent or received child pornography. They were armed with a search warrant [documentcloud.org] [warning: this documentation contains explicit descriptions of sexual abuse] which allowed them to search Michalski's computer for evidence, and during the raid, agents recovered his iPhone X.

The agents who found the iPhone asked Michalski to unlock the device via Face ID, which he did. They "placed the [phone] into airplane mode and examined it by looking through the files and folders manually and documenting the findings with pictures."

The facial unlocking was voluntary (or so they claim), and the Columbus Police and FBI have devices capable of bypassing the phone's passcode protection. So much for security.

Also at AppleInsider [appleinsider.com].

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