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FBI Had No Way To Access Locked iPhone After Terror Attack, Watchdog Finds (zdnet.com)
The FBI did not have the technical capability to access an iPhone used by one of the terrorists behind the San Bernardino shooting, a Justice Department watchdog has found. ZDNet: A report by the department's Office of Inspector General sheds new light on the FBI's efforts to gain access to the terrorist's phone. It lands almost exactly a year after the FBI dropped a legal case against Apple, which had refused a demand by the government to build a backdoor that would've bypassed the encryption on the shooter's iPhone. Apple said at the time that if it was forced to backdoor one of its products, it would "set a dangerous precedent." Syed Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, killed 14 people in the southern Californian town in December 2015. The 11-page report said that the FBI "had no such capability" to access the contents of Farook's encrypted iPhone, amid concerns that there were conflicting claims about whether the FBI may have had techniques to access the device by the time it had filed a suit against Apple. Those claims were mentioned in affidavits in the court case, as well as in testimony by former FBI director James Comey.
Very misleading. FBI didn't pursue a solution internally and an outside vendor was found that could. So saying the FBI wasn't able to is incorrect. Did the FBI possess the technical ability at the time, perhaps not. Could they obtain it, YES!
"According to the report, FBI executive assistant director Amy Hess "became concerned" that the department chief of the Cryptographic and Electronic Analysis Unit (CEAU), the division charged with obtaining evidence from electronic devices, did "not seem to want to find a technical solution" that would unlock the shooter's phone.
The report added that the chief said he may have have known of a solution, "but remained silent in order to pursue his own agenda of obtaining a favorable court ruling against Apple.
The report found that nobody withheld knowledge of an existing technical capability, as Hess had feared, but the watchdog found that the CEAU didn't pursue all possible avenues in the search for a solution. http://www.zdnet.com/article/f...