A company that makes phone hacking devices claims to have developed a solution that freezes iPhones in a state that lets cops more easily access sensitive data inside them, according to a video obtained by 404 Media.
This is the latest salvo in the never-ending battle between Apple and companies that help cops — sometimes those in authoritarian countries — break into iPhones.
In November 2024, 404 Media revealed Apple quietly introduced a new feature in iOS that automatically reboots an iPhone that has not been unlocked for 72 hours. The idea behind this so-called “inactivity reboot” is to revert the phone to a state that makes it harder for police to break into the device, and thus extract sensitive data from it with forensics technology.
At the time of Apple’s change, law enforcement agents expressed concern about this new feature, given that oftentimes they can’t immediately try to break into iPhones that have been seized. That could be because police are still waiting for a court authorization to do so, or there is simply a backlog of devices to unlock, for example.
In the US, if cops get into a phone before a warrant, even if a warrant is issued later, all evidence from the phone is suppressed as illegally obtained.
This is a bigger concern with respect to intelligence agencies who conduct mass surveillance.
This assumes a healthy and functioning country. I wouldn’t assume that of the US in particular. People are being hunted, kidnapped, imprisoned and murdered by the government as we speak.
I’m a law student in the US, so I’m actually privy to this information in the form of all the talks that they have judges and lawyers giving.
You may not assume that the US judiciary is healthy and functioning, but it is not as broken as most international observers (or chronically online Americans) think it is. In particular, if you have been observing the Department for Justice’s results recently, you’ll notice a few things:
So in short, you are partially correct and partially wrong. The judiciary of the US has shown to be remarkably resilient considering it has withstood two years of a fascist in power and in full control of the legislature.
First of all, you’re doing important work and I wish you well in your studies and career, for everyone’s sake.
Thanks for the insight. Definitely some positives there. When ICE have added an innocent person’s data to be absorbed into (eg) Palantir’s database, how confident can we be that it is actually removed again?
If this is illegal (which I am not convinced that it is, even though it certainly should be), then a judge can order Palantir or the relevant government agencies to destroy the data. If there is a question about whether this order will be complied with, the court can appoint a special master to oversee it, but this is rare. Usually what happens is the court will take their word on it, but if it turns out they lied, then the court will impose a stiff penalty for contempt of court.
I guess this is my main point of concern right now, as an outsider. I know that the courts are still ruling against Trump and the Republicans fairly regularly, but then I hear about situations where they’re simply ignoring the courts’ rulings and little seems to actually happen as a result.
What do those “disciplinary referrals” actually do? Do people actually get fired, or is it just something else for the Republicans to ignore?
Disciplinary referrals are issued against lawyers who break the court rules. Contempt of court is used against anyone (lawyer or not) who violates a direct order from the court. A lawyer who blatantly violates an order may receive both a disciplinary referral and also a contempt of court penalty.
Before a court issues a penalty of any kind against anyone, they usually issue what is called an order to show cause, which essentially means the party accused of violating the rules must appear before the judge and explain why they should not receive a penalty.
Disciplinary referrals are addressed to the state bar association, which are organisations comparable to guilds which license lawyers. The bar association can impose penalties against the lawyer which include:
An example: Rudy Guiliani was a Trump lawyer who filed submissions before several courts containing information he knew to be false and raising allegations he knew were unsubstantiated, as a part of Trump’s scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election. The New York bar association disbarred him for this, and the DC bar association took note and automatically disbarred him as well. His legal career is finished; he cannot legally be employed as a lawyer anywhere in the country.
Contempt of court is an inherent power of the court to punish people who violate its orders. A judge can, on their own initiative, declare someone guilty of contempt of court and impose a punishment for it, which could include:
Example: A lawyer was fined $10,000 in March 2026 by my state’s Court of Appeal for submitting a brief containing AI hallucinations.
Ah, so as this progresses the Republicans steadily run out of “competent” lawyers because they keep getting disbarred (or quitting to save their legal skins), leaving them with increasingly incompetent ones that have an even harder time accomplishing stuff.
Here’s hoping their legal wells run dry quickly, I suppose.
Remember in the early days of Trump II when we were hearing about entire US Attorney’s offices quitting in protest? That no longer happens, but that’s what happens when top brass asks experienced, career lawyers to defend positions they know are indefensible, and insists they sign their name to hot garbage, that they know is the same kind as what got Rudy Guiliani disbarred.
So yes, the Trump Justice Department is indeed running out of good lawyers and that’s why the US Attorney’s Office for DC is led by a Fox News commentator who happens to have a law degree.
The judiciary really needs to start using “Imprisonment until the person complies with the order” a lot more early, often, and against people higher up in the DoJ org chart.
Judges generally issue escalating sanctions. A verbal admonition first, then a verbal threat to impose sanctions, then an order to show cause, then actual penalties.
Despite what the media reports, the Administration always folds and complies because it would be embarrassing to have senior officials or government lawyers actually penalised for failing to comply with a court order.
Yep, and the concern shouldn’t just be for yourself - authorities will clone the phones and then comb your contacts and social media and then add to their systems compiling relational data and use that to target people, often innocent people. Your phone data won’t just be used to harass or inconvenience or stress you out, it’ll be used to harm other people. You should care about that.
This is not a hard and fast rule. There is the concept of Inevitable Discovery.
If they find evidence during an illegal entry, they may later seize it lawfully under a search warrant and prosecutors may use it in court if they can supply an independent source, rather than benefit from the earlier violation.
Real world example: In Nix v. Williams, decided in 1984, the Supreme Court considered evidence of a child’s body found after police obtained incriminating statements from Williams. Those statements were later determined to have been illegally obtained and were excluded. However, the body was located in the existing search area and the same type of location (a culvert) they were searching. It was simply in a search quadrant they had not gotten to yet. So the searchers would likely have found the body anyway even without those statements.
Well, as I’ve quickly learned, pretty much nothing in law is an absolute rule. Judges love making their exceptions.
kinda the entire point of common law, just a vibes legal system designed around enabling english aristocrats to hold onto their power longer
That’s part for sure, but I’d argue that it’s more often lawmakers trying to phrase things to specifically carve out loopholes their donors want to exploit. Then judges having to work through the bullshit to determine what it actually says and whether those specific circumstances are covered.
That example I have above for instance, should the body not be admissible as evidence just because the killer told Police where it was a few hours before they would have found it anyway?