FBI lashes out at Apple over cooperation in unlocking terrorist’s iPhone
On Monday, the American FBI lashed out at Apple for allegedly helping the company to unlock an attacker’s phone. The US Attorney General is also not happy with the company’s position.
The U.S. Federal Police Service has lashed out at Apple in a press release. The FBI writes about the investigation into Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, who in December last year shot and killed three soldiers at an air force base in Pensacola, Florida. The FBI always suspected the man had terrorist motives, but wanted access to the shooter’s iPhones to confirm. Apple always refused to cooperate.
The FBI has since confirmed that it was able to gain access to the iPhones without Apple’s help. The police department does not write exactly how it did that. The FBI speaks of “months of hard work by the men and women at the FBI,” using their “creativity and technical expertise.” The FBI has previously worked with outside companies to unlock other iPhones.
The FBI lashes out at Apple in the press release. “We have effectively had no help from Apple,” the service writes. “We asked every partner and every company that might have a solution for these locked phones, but nobody had it. So we did it ourselves.” The FBI says the technique it’s used isn’t applicable to other iPhones, which it calls “our broad Apple problem.” The FBI also denounced the high cost of the investigation, and the fact that the investigation has now been much delayed. As a result, a lot of information was used too late, the service claims.
Not only the FBI, but also the US Attorney General William Barr speaks out against the locking of iPhones. Barr has wanted to take action against encryption for some time, because it makes research into terrorism and child abuse more difficult. Barr seizes the current situation to argue for it again. “Our national security can no longer be left in the hands of big corporations who put money above public security. The time has come to take legal action,” Barr writes.
Apple denies that it did not cooperate with the investigation. In a statement to The Verge, the company says it has released iCloud backups, account information and transaction data from multiple accounts to law enforcement. The company is repeating what it said earlier about a ‘back door’ in software. According to Apple, a backdoor in one phone is not possible without making all phones vulnerable.