Podcast: Leak Show Cops Can Break into Locked iPhones

Read the original at 404 Media ↗
Cite

Cox, J. (2026, October 8). Podcast: Leak Show Cops Can Break into Locked iPhones. 404 Media. https://www.404media.co/podcast-leak-show-cops-can-break-into-locked-iphones/

Dated when The Aporia collected the article, usually within hours of publication. Check the original for its exact date and byline.

404 Media · collected 2026-10-08 · by Joseph Cox

Quick Summary

This article announces a podcast episode where Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai discusses how law enforcement can bypass the inactivity reboot on iPhones, allowing them to access locked devices more easily. The podcast, available on platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify, includes subscriber-exclusive content such as an extended video version of the episode related to a ChatGPT case from New Mexico.
Written by AI on 2026-10-08, from this article's own text only (the story summary below draws on all the coverage).

AI analysis

Story summary

In a recent podcast episode, journalist Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai revealed how law enforcement can bypass the inactivity reboot on iPhones, potentially allowing them to access locked devices without the user's consent. The podcast is available on platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Subscribers gain access to bonus content and extended versions of episodes, including a special case involving ChatGPT from New Mexico.

Written for “iPhone Security Breach” on 2026-10-30, grounded in this article and the 0 other(s) covering the same event.

Story

📰 iPhone Security Breach
Technology · 1 article(s) covering the same event.

Compared with similar articles

Nothing to compare against. No article is close enough to this one for the pipeline to have linked or judged the pair.
How this article was measured signals, leaning charts, publisher record, byline, topics and claims

Signals How these are calculated →

Claims extracted
6
sentences that state something as happening or true
Uncertain
0%
0 of 6 hedged ("reportedly", "may", "according to")
Leaning
not political
takes no side on a contested political question
Publisher signals
95/100
404 Media's corrections and hedging, across everything collected from it. Not a measure of accuracy.
Outlets on this story
1
Technology
Same framing elsewhere
1
articles that frame the event the way this one does
Analyzed 2026-10-08 · how these are computed

How this is being covered How these are calculated →

Article leaning vs. publisher reliability
Source leaning vs. consistency

Publisher

404 Media · 172 article(s) · 0 correction(s) detected
No corrections detected for this publisher. That may mean careful reporting, or simply that nothing has been checked.

Who wrote this

Joseph Cox
25 article(s) here · 0 carrying a prediction
🔮 A letter written by Telegram, and providing a specific user’s phone number, user ID, and IP address, reads: Dear Sir or Madam, For this particular case, the following information was available: User #7149269705 : +201155664529 [Mahmoud Almohtadi] IP 184.186.72.239, 8 Oct 2025 2:08:12 We hope this information will be helpful in your investigation. Kind regards, The Telegram Team The letter says Telegram provided the data “voluntarily” and that by providing it, Telegram is “not conceding that we are subject to U.S. jurisdiction for this or any other request or any purpose.”
🔮 This is pretty normal in the advertising world, but I seriously doubt that when most of ChatGPT’s many, many users see an ad, they realize that might be because someone, somewhere, uploaded their phone number into OpenAI’s systems.
2026-10-15 · assertive framing · ChatGPT Ads Target Your Phone Number, Email
🔮 Multiple Democrat, Republican, and Independent lawmakers have introduced new pieces of legislation that, if passed, would dramatically curb federal agencies’ access to Flock cameras, with the lawmakers referencing reporting by 404 Media in their explanations for why the legislation is needed.
🔮 Although any potential damage will be less if ShinyHunters doesn’t publish the data publicly, the theft happening at all still presents much of those same national security risks, with the data providing granular insight into how the FBI operates. “Since the very beginning we had made our decision that we would never publish this data.
🔮 What is different in this latest Copilot episode, and 404 Media’s reporting on contractors at other AI companies like OpenAI, is that the content humans are reviewing are prompts and uploads that chatbot users may assume are private, and that the contractors are not looking at this material to train the models to filter out offensive images or for some other safety concern.
🔮 And the ALPR Hostlist Management Audit report details changes made to alerts the agency may receive.
🔮 Georgia State University has rescinded a job offer given to a high profile activist who is currently fighting a case in which he allegedly wiped a security-focused Android phone before Customs and Border Protection (CBP) could search it.
🔮 The prompts these people review can include whole conversations between users and the chatbot, conversations that most of ChatGPT’s more than 900 million users probably don’t realize may be read by actual people.
🔮 Apparently over the cross of that source and interviewer relationship, Biden “asked if he could use our mailing list whenever he launched a new product,” according to a statement posted by Channel 5 to X on Monday.
🔮 Border Patrol is running secretive predictive policing units that analyze Americans’ financial activity and other data, then feed that intelligence to local police who pull people over who are not suspected of any specific crime, but which the government thinks may be worth searching, 404 Media has found.
Also by Joseph Cox
Nothing else under this byline is closely related to this article, so these are simply their most recent.
All 25 articles by Joseph Cox →

Topics

Apple Podcasts ChatGPT LLM New Mexico iPhones

Subjects

Apple Podcasts ORG · 1× Jason PERSON · 1× Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai PERSON · 1× New Mexico GPE · 1× Sam PERSON · 1× Spotify ORG · 1× Transistor PERSON · 1× YouTube ORG · 1×

Narrative

We start this week with a story from our old friend Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, about how cops can bypass the inactivity reboot on iPhones.
framing: assertive · carried by 1 article(s) · first seen 2026-10-08
2026-10-08 · 404 Media
Podcast: Leak Show Cops Can Break into Locked iPhones · assertive framing

Claims (6 extracted, 0 hedged)

We start this week with a story from our old friend Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, about how cops can bypass the inactivity reboot on iPhones. asserted
cops → start → iPhones
After the break, Jason tells us how people are losing their minds over an LLM ‘torture’ prison. asserted
people → tell → prison
In the subscribers-only section, Sam explains what happened in a wild ChatGPT case in New Mexico. asserted
what → explain → Mexico
If you become a paid subscriber, check your inbox for an email from our podcast host Transistor for a link to the subscribers-only version! asserted
you → become → version
You can also add that subscribers feed to your podcast app of choice and never miss an episode that way. asserted
You → add → episode
The email should also contain the subscribers-only link for the extended video version too. asserted
email → contain → version
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