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.
Wait, people were ever using biometric unlock?
Oh… oh… did the obviously inevitable thing that would happen under that paradigm… happen under that paradigm?
Wow, how surprising.
Hell some phones have a spot on the back that’s explicitly for scanning their fingerprint.
You mean a fingerprint scanner? Like the ones that have been on all phones for years? Or, explicitly on the back, like the LG G3 did in 2014? The way you phrased that it seems like it was new information to you.