Many were skeptical that the work iPhone at the centre of the San Bernardino controversy would prove in any way useful to the FBI given that the shooters left it untouched while destroying their personal phones, and so far that skepticism seems justified. Despite having had access to all the data on the phone for more than a week, the FBI has apparently not yet found anything of value.
The WSJ reports that FBI general counsel James Baker told an International Association of Privacy Professionals conference that it was “too early” to say whether anything useful would be found, and that it may or may not choose to reveal the answer once it is certain.
“We’re now doing an analysis of that data, as we would in any other type of criminal terrorism investigation,’’ Mr. Baker said, adding: “That means we would follow logical leads.” But because the agency has only had access to the data for a short period of time, he said “it’s simply too early’’ to say whether anything found on the phone has been valuable to investigators […]
The FBI […] won’t decide whether to talk about what it has found until after that examination is complete.
Baker also said that the agency was still feeling its way here, as normally such decisions would be made behind closed doors.
It raises a whole range of issues in terms of how we’re going to handle it going forward. Normally we don’t have such detailed real-time public discussions of precise surveillance tools…There’s a significant amount of novelty to us.
While feeling some sympathy for the FBI having to figure out a whole new approach, it’s worth remembering that it was the agency’s own decision to place itself in that position by going to the press in the first place – even before it told Apple about its court motion.
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““We’re now doing an analysis of that data, as we would in any other type of criminal terrorism investigation,’’ Mr. Baker said, adding: “That means we would follow logical leads.” But because the agency has only had access to the data for a short period of time, he said “it’s simply too early’’ to say whether anything found on the phone has been valuable to investigators […]
The FBI […] won’t decide whether to talk about what it has found until after that examination is complete.
Baker also said that the agency was still feeling its way here, as normally such decisions would be made behind closed doors.”
No. Shock. There. The various 3 letter agencies all seem to want to have access to EVERYTHING in our lives – but they want the ability to continue to operate in “The Dark” without any oversight. The Founding Fathers are still spinning in their graves!
And, I’m sure the FBI / DOJ is not going to come clean and say that they found “nothing of interest” in that county-issued work phone. Absolutely no threat to “National Security” which has become their standard reason for trampling our rights.
The “Founding Fathers” had no vision whatsoever of smartphones, GPS, text/voice communications, encryption, etc. They also could never predict automatic weapons or bombs capable of killing scores of people, or psychopathic religious extremists who are happy to strap such bombs to their pathetic little bodies. See, the “right to bear arms” meant you could keep your musket to shoot vermin, your dinner, and protect your property.
You can certainly bet if our Founding Fathers founded the US today things would look quite different, wouldn’t you say?
Honestly, tired of all this FBI bashing. I wish the FBI would just get dissolved. Then, when more frequent and much more destructive attacks happen, aided by the encrypted protection of terrorist privacy, you won’t have any help from the FBI and you can’t complain either…scores of helpless victims, clutching their smartphones with all their precious private data.
Worth it? Sure, you say yes now, until something terrible impacts you or your loved ones…no FBI to kick around.
translation, we found nothing useful.
Weird huh, coming from the Federal Bureau of iPhones¿
If I have to lose a little of my ‘privacy’ to prevent a repeat of the horrific carnage of the Boston Marathon, the Brussels Bombing, the Paris Massacre, 9/11 & 7/7 or any of the dozens of other terrorist atrocities comitted around the world each year then as far as I, and many other people, are concerned thats a fair trade.
If we are serious about preventing mass- murder and the disruption and heartbreak that follows in its wake then we need to let the security services do their job; a big part of which is gathering intel. Wining on about the loss of our ‘civil liberties’ only helps the terrorist evade and prosper. They are a far bigger threat to our liberties. They created the situation and the necessity for ‘-hacking’ in to suspect’s phones. In war we sometimes have to make a few personal sacrifices, forgo a few liberties in order to defeat the enemy and not play in to their hands.
lol.
Those attacks could have been prevented if the government did their job properly.
Look at the european union.
They are basically welcoming terrorists with open arms.
Obama is also doing the same thing.
Also, terrorists in the paris attacks used burner phones.
You are precisely the kind of uninformed sheep that the FBI and other agencies are counting on for support. I’m saddened that in the face of all the information that exists and is easily accessible to anyone that there still exist people with their heads buried so deep in the sand. You need to consider relocating to China which I believe would fit your sensibilities far better than the USA.
“Arguing that you don’t care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say,”
Edward Snowden.
If you honestly believe that ANY government can prevent a terrorist organization from a terrorist act by decrypting communications devices – than I really feel sorry for your naivete. Considering that the Boston Tea Party was an act of domestic terrorism 200 plus years ago – and there were no communications devices outside of cypher and paper – then perhaps you should buy an island and live there, alone.
As was already pointed out, the Paris terrorists used burner cell phones – use once and discard – to communicate. Considering all the communications that are routinely “swept up” by the various governments around the world and yet that tragedy happened, encryption / decryption plays a very small part in fighting a dedicated terror organization.
YMMV
You sir, are what Benjamin Franklin would call an idiot. “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” I am sure you see the TSA as keeping you safe as well? One of these days, mark my words, the NSA will be sending out a form to safety minded individuals like yourslef to give all your passwords so they can keep you safe. Good luck with that…
You don’t understand, backdoors don’t make us safer, they make it more dangerous for EVERYONE…So if that’s your concern, you should be against this kind of thing, as it is basically an invitation for hackers to steal data.
@Martin Scott: The problem with the reasoning you propose is that terrorists will find other ways of encrypting their communications, while the general public will be left with insecure devices that would be easier for hackers to break in. This is without mentioning that terrorists often use burner phones from what I gather. Also, phones that could be spied by the American authorities could also be spied by the Authorities of any country. Which would lead to abuses. And I am not talking about abuses only in other countries, it could very well happen even in the United-States of America.
@Martin Scott: The problem with the reasoning you propose is that terrorists will find other ways of encrypting their communications, while the general public will be left with insecure devices that would be easier for hackers to break in. This is without mentioning that terrorists often use burner phones from what I gather. Also, phones that could be spied by the American authorities could also be spied by the Authorities of any country. Which could lead to abuses. And these abuses may very well happen not only in other countries, but in the United-States of America as well. Aside from that, it is surprising to see to what extent people are ready to give up privacy in the USA while they are not ready to have stricter firearm control. And this, despite the fact that there are more people shot by kids that have access to firearms that are not well safeguarded than people shot by terrorists.
Short answer:
If data shows terrorism, the FBI will shout out as loud and often as it can that Apple should have helped get them the data earlier to save lives.
If data shows nothing (which will be the case), this is an ongoing investigation and we can’t discuss ongoing investigations…sorry.
If this is used in a prosecution, it will have to be revealed in discovery.
It was never about information from the phone. It was to be the camel’s nose under the tent to allow local law enforcement to examine the contents of a phone without the bother of the courts.
I would really be surprised if they actually found “something”.
Make no mistake. The FBI knew full well that it would be able to get into the phone, and it did not “need” Apple to engineer a backdoor. They have some of the top technical minds in the WORLD on their payroll. They are merely testing the waters…
If that were true, why are they presenting themselves as an incompetent bunch of fudmongers, shouting cry baby whenever public opinion works against them? Or the law for that matter.
Tell me this: why aren’t they pushing Zuckerberg for creating a backdoor into WhatsApp, now that it’s end-to-end encrypted?
FBI. Federal Bureau of iPhones.
There is still no evidence that they actually did get into the iPhone. I don’t know that they didn’t but there is no evidence either way. Let’s be honest, we all know there is nothing on this phone anyway. The terrorists purposely destroyed their personal phones. Do we really think they just forget to destroy their work phone? There was never anything of interest on this phone and the FBI knew this all along. If they had something of value, they would have been crowing about it by now.
The bottom line is that they saved themselves embarrassment of losing the court case against Apple by backing down. It was clear leading up to this point that the FBI / DOJ didn’t have ground to stand on with this case. While we didn’t get to have a precedent set against them, I believe they will think twice before attempting to force Apple down this path again. Make no mistake, Apple’s is going to continuously make it more difficult to breach the security of each new generation of devices.