Cops take dead man’s smartphone to his corpse in attempt to unlock it

Enlarge / A customer inspects the 2013 iPhone at the Wangfujing flagship store in Beijing. (credit: Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)

In a very unusual move, police detectives in Largo, Florida, recently went to a local funeral home and located the body of a man named Linus Phillip. The 30-year-old had died days earlier at the hands of a different Largo officer.

The detectives then attempted to use the fingers on Phillip's body to unlock his own smartphone, which had been recovered from the scene. Their efforts were not successful.

For years, law enforcement officials nationwide have said that they struggle with the so-called "Going Dark" problem-the idea that strong encryption on smartphones is making it significantly more difficult for police to access data held there.

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