UK police have a creative new solution to the encryption problem: just snatch the phone.

Today, the BBC reported on a recent fraud case in which Scotland Yard agents staged a pre-arrest mugging in order to make sure a suspect’s iPhone was seized in unlocked mode. Investigating a credit card forger, police waited for the suspect to make a call, then snatched the phone directly out of his hand before arresting him. The result was an unlocked phone — an open book for investigators, provided they didn’t let it slip into sleep mode.

The tactic itself isn’t new. In the Silk Road case, agents made a point to pull Ross Ulbricht away from his laptop before he could close it, which would have encrypted the hard drive and shut off valuable…

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