Changelog
Device-seizure and compelled-unlocking law changes often, across all four jurisdictions this site covers. Rights advice that has quietly gone stale is harmful advice, so every change here is dated.
2026-11-02
New page: what Apple’s and Android’s own security notes say, quoting Apple’s iOS 18.3.1 security note and USB accessories page and Android’s encryption, rate-limiting and security bulletin pages with their dates. The could-they-get-in tool now carries Apple’s accessories page for an iPhone that has been unlocked and locked again.
2026-11-02
New page: what a phone extraction can actually see, quoting how SWGDE and Upturn describe logical, file-system and physical extraction, with Signal, SQLite and toolmaker statements quoted alongside. The pages on full file system extraction and deleted data now quote more sources on the same questions.
2026-11-02
Sourcing fixes: the Information Commissioner’s Office report is now checked against an archived copy because the ICO site blocks automated readers; the Tunick docket quote now carries the case number, court and entry dates; Judge Corrigan’s partial concurrence in Touset and 28 U.S.C. §41 are now quoted; Judge Lee’s concurrence in Alisigwe is now quoted with the sentence in which she agrees that neither a warrant nor probable cause is necessary; the Ninth Circuit’s Cano entry now includes the court’s statement of what the reasonable suspicion must be of; the titles of two outside articles are shown as titles; the thumb-unlock page title now names the two courts.
2026-10-06
New page: state supreme court rulings on compelled passcodes in the United States, state by state. The comparison matrix gains a United States answer on the passcode question, and the United States pages quote more of the CBP directive, a 2019 Utah bill as enrolled, and the border-search appeals decisions.
2026-10-04
New section, “Situations”: quoted law, codes and guidance for a pupil’s phone at school in England, journalistic and source material, a complainant asked for a phone, the phone of someone who has died, an employer-owned phone, and a work phone at a UK port.
Each page shows which jurisdictions it applies to. Where a page covers a duty that it is an offence to refuse, the offence is stated first, under “You must”, before any limit on officers. Each page also quotes provisions that pages outside this section do not, and where it restates a provision quoted elsewhere it links to a page that covers it. Corrections made to existing pages in the same update are listed on the corrections page.
2026-10-04
New pages: search warrants and premises searches, property taken in police custody, and “seize and sift” in England and Wales; in Australia, things moved for examination and the return of seized things.
The comparison matrix gains Australian answers on taking a phone, getting it back and biometric unlocking (New South Wales), and the passcode and biometric comparisons gain lines quoting vendor documentation for two device states. Further quotes were extended where they stopped before a condition; the corrections this made to existing pages are listed on the corrections page.
2026-10-02
Every page, comparison and tool re-read against its sources; statements that said more than their quotes were narrowed or corrected, and the corrections are listed on the corrections page.
Quotes that stopped before a condition or exception were extended. The comparison overview now shows the source under each badge and marks cells that rest on a report or on an agency’s own statement. Statements that report what a document, a report, an agency publication or a provision says moved to a column headed “What the sources say”, which quotes them as worded and does not classify them. The “next 60 seconds” tool now lists things to ask and check, each with a quoted source.
2026-09-21
Analytics made consent-first; methodology now lists the corrections made to the original brief; site opened to search engines.
2026-09-09
Privacy page now quotes the law it relies on — PECR regulation 6 was substituted on 5 February 2026.
2026-09-09
Launch content published.
Jurisdiction sections, the comparison matrix, and the tools went live, with every claim quote-anchored and machine-verified.
2026-09-08
Site scaffolded from the rightsandlimits integrity scaffold; no content pages yet.