Seeing posts saying FBI could not get into WaPo reporter's phone because she had it in Lockdown Mode. This isn't true. They couldn't use forensic tool to capture full-disk image, but they could still access contents. They had to take photos of it, though, which is still a gain for privacy.
Imagine a forensic team having to take photos of every piece of content they want and to re-record each voice recording. Making it uber-cumbersome and inconvenient for a government to collect data is still a win for privacy
Wording of my post is confusing. To clarify, they *were* able to access phone content they wanted, but could not take it from disk image of phone. Instead, they took it from Signal app on her laptop because it sync'd w/ Signal on phone. So yes they could not unlock phone but did still access content
So I was referring to posts I saw that claimed that because her phone was in Lockdown Mode they couldn't unlock the phone and get the contents. But they *did* get the contents, they just had to get it from the computer, and they had to collect it in a cumbersome way.
Feb 4, 2026 19:29
