The search warrant to raid a Washington Post reporter’s home shows how authorities can open your phone without your consent.

The recent federal raid on the home of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson isn’t merely an attack by the Trump administration on the free press. It’s also a warning to anyone with a smartphone.

Included in the search and seizure warrant for the raid on Natanson’s home is a section titled “Biometric Unlock,” which explicitly authorized law enforcement personnel to obtain Natanson’s phone and both hold the device in front of her face and to forcibly use her fingers to unlock it. In other words, a judge gave the FBI permission to attempt to bypass biometrics: the convenient shortcuts that let you unlock your phone by scanning your fingerprint or face.

  • FishFace@piefed.socialEnglish
    1·
    2 days ago

    leaping to assumptions

    if you want to avoid people “leaping to assumptions” - or “filling in the blanks” as I might call it, then you could avoid comments like

    ergo… ;)

    which is inviting exactly that.

    I’m not making any assumptions about tone; my parody of tone was meant to emphasise the pedantic nature of the point, regardless of how you would have spoken it. No, that’s not kind, but this is important. It’s not kind to distract from the real issues.