FBI Gained Access to iPhone X Through Face ID Unlocked

The FBI has used the face of a suspect in an American child porn investigation to access his iPhone X via Face ID. It would be the first case in which this method has been used. Fingerprints have already been used in previous cases.

The current case has been brought to light by Forbes. The site has uploaded a court document detailing how the phone was accessed. It states that the suspect was at home at the time of the search of his home and that “on the basis of the search warrant issued, he had to keep his face in front of the iPhone X while executing the warrant.” Further down it says: “The phone was unlocked using the facial recognition feature on the iPhone X and [de FBI-agent, red.] was able to briefly search the contents of the phone.”

According to Forbes, it was not possible to get all the information from the device in this way, because the pass code was not known to the researchers. This is required to connect the phone to a computer and copy files. The iPhone was later subjected to forensic investigation, but it is unclear what the outcome is. It would be the first case in which an investigation service has used Face ID to access an iPhone X, which introduced this feature.

A lawyer from the Legal Aid Society tells Forbes it is “traditionally legal to use a person’s face for evidence or to gather evidence.” However, it would be the first time that a face can give access to a large amount of personal information. The site writes that so far there are no known cases of objections to the use of Face ID by researchers. A lawyer says the law in this area is not yet fully clear and there is a possibility that the practice violates the Fifth Amendment. That should prevent people from having to testify against themselves. This protection extends to passcodes or passwords, but not to biometric information.

Earlier it appeared that the American police used the fingerprints of the deceased to gain access to telephones in certain cases. According to a source from Forbes, this was also tried with Face ID, but failed due to the use of liveness detection. For example, the function checks whether the face belongs to a living person on the basis of various properties.