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AP, Vice, USA Today Sue FBI For Info On Phone Hack of San Bernardino Shooter (usatoday.com)
Three news organizations filed a lawsuit Friday seeking information about how the FBI was able to break into the locked iPhone of one of the gunmen in the December terrorist attack in San Bernardino. From a USA Today report: The Justice Department spent more than a month this year in a legal battle with Apple over it could force the tech giant to help agents bypass a security feature on Syed Rizwan Farook's iPhone. The dispute roiled the tech industry and prompted a fierce debate about the extent of the government's power to pry into digital communications. It ended when the FBI said an "outside party" had cracked the phone without Apple's help. The news organizations' lawsuit seeks information about the source of the security exploit agents used to unlock the phone, and how much the government paid for it. It was filed in federal court in Washington by USA TODAY's parent company, Gannett, the Associated Press and Vice Media. The FBI refused to provide that information to the organizations under the Freedom of Information Act. The lawsuit charges that "there is no lawful basis" for the FBI to keep the records secret.
Yea, they will release the document, but it will be 100% redacted....so total waste of time...
You're messin' with my Zen Thing, man.....
how bout they pick a case which doesn't involve folks who clearly came to the US with the intent of killing Americans? I'm sure that there are cases of over reach by the FBI, so why not pick on those cases? I'm not getting the obsession that the industry, and the press, have with San Bernadino mass murders. Pick on the horror of the cell phone for the whacko of the Sandy Hook slaughter, or something else domestic.
In a roundabout but easy calculable way - it came to about $1.3M.
"Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey said on Thursday the agency paid more to get into the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters than he will make in the remaining seven years and four months he has in his job. According to figures from the FBI and the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, Comey's annual salary as of January 2015 was $183,300. Without a raise or bonus, Comey will make $1.34 million over the remainder of his job."
Source: http://www.reuters.com/article...
Science journalist in NYC. Writing for Discover Magazine, IEEE Spectrum, Popular Science, Scientific American, and more.
ha! hahahahahahahaa
I thought that intentionally circumventing these things was illegal. Did the FBI arrest the owners of the company after they demonstrated the ability to hack the phone?
not that complicated.
News organisations are always wanting to protect their sources, so now they want the FBI to give out theirs? So the next time they are asked to give their sources on something are they going to? Not likely. Also, what reason do they need to know who or how it was cracked? As for costs, being tax payers money, that should be disclosed but that's about it.
The news organizations' lawsuit seeks information about the source of the security exploit agents used to unlock the phone, and how much the government paid for it. It was filed in federal court in Washington by USA TODAY's parent company, Gannett, the Associated Press and Vice Media. The FBI refused to provide that information to the organizations under the Freedom of Information Act. The lawsuit charges that "there is no lawful basis" for the FBI to keep the records secret.
If President Obama was really committed to running the most transparent administration in US history (remember, this was probably the thing he promised most frequently during his 2008 campaign), then he would order the FBI director to release the information without them having to be taken to court. But, I won't hold my breath. I'm just saying...
They won't release the info because the "hack" was silly silly silly. Probably related to shoulder surfing.
Maybe they found a friend/coworker who saw the code being entered on the phone. Or maybe they got some security footage from a bank/store/etc. and could see him type in the code. Whatever the actual case, they didn't actual hack the software, but found a very silly workaround.
Either that, or they didn't hack in at all. Saying that they did was simply a lie to save face.
This signature is false.
I don't think they are going to get very far with the lawsuit under FOIA. See https://www.foia.gov/faq.html#...
Exemption 1: Information that is classified to protect national security.
Exemption 4: Trade secrets or commercial or financial information that is confidential or privileged.
Exemption 7(E). Would disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions
So, beside the national security issue, the technique may be a trade secret of the contractor whom the FBI hired to pull off the hack. Next, the hack was clearly used as a technique for a law enforcement investigation.
They will probably disclose it. They are currently redacting all sentences in the document except the date and page number.
My guess is they did not break into the phone at all, they KNEW there was not going to be anything of value on it and realised that they were probably going to loose the pissing contest with Apple and that would set a bad precedent.
So, easiest thing to do is say "we got someone else to do it, nothing of value found", this makes the public think they are still competent, leave the legal battle for an opportunity they may win, and makes Apple spend a fortune trying to figure out how they did it.
DMCA does not apply to law enforcement!
Nobody expected anything to be on it, and nothing was.
A cynical person might think that the point of breaking the iPhone security wasn't to see what was on the phone at all, since they were already mostly sure nothing was there, but was to force Apple to break their security in a case where the FBI could shout "terrorism! National security!".
If the local press is quick a local walk in FOIA request at a state, city, town, parish level for costs related to a federal state task force hardware can be very productive.
Show any needed local "police issued press ID" to be granted your full existing constitutional rights again, access and get reading, ask for a copy while waiting, right to photograph. Offers to post out, collect later in person, need to find the only staff with access will just result in full redactions or nothing been found later.
This will often need to take place during a very small window of time before material is quickly placed under full sealed federal control or the city/state requests full federal cover.
Funding for state task force hardware is often hidden from any and all state, national digital FOIA search attempts by default but a local paper record might just still exist until full federal protection is enacted.
Try the paper trail and use locals as fronts who have the accents, local photo ID's, still needed local police press passes, can quote any state legal findings, know contractor and city bureaucracies.
Be aware of attempts by contractors or local gov efforts to hide local paper access with helpful or "new" rules only supporting a digital search at a distant central city or state/federal level. Ask to see the local requested local paper work.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"