Apple will defy order to hack into gunman’s locked iPhone
Print Edition
APPLE CEO Tim Cook says the company will fight a federal judge’s order to help the FBI hack into an iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino, California shooters. The company said complying could potentially undermine encryption for millions of users.
Cook’s response sets the stage for a legal fight between the federal government and Silicon Valley with implications for conflicts over digital privacy and national security.
Judge Sheri Pym had ordered Apple to help the FBI break into an iPhone belonging to Syed Farook, one of the shooters in the December 2 attack that killed 14 people. Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik died in a gunbattle with police.
The ruling requires Apple to supply software the FBI can load onto Farook’s work iPhone to bypass a feature that erases the phone’s data after too many attempts to unlock it. The FBI wants to be able to try multiple different combinations until it finds the right one.
Cook argued that the order “has implications far beyond the legal case at hand.” He said it could undermine encryption by using specialized software to create an essential back door akin to a “master key, capable of opening hundreds of millions of locks.”
On the company’s website he wrote: “In the wrong hands, this software — which does not exist today — would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someone’s physical possession. The FBI may use different words to describe this tool, but make no mistake: Building a version of iOS that bypasses security in this way would undeniably create a back door. And while the government may argue that its use would be limited to this case, there is no way to guarantee such control.”
Federal prosecutors told Pym that they can’t access Farook’s work phone because they don’t know his passcode and Apple has not cooperated. Under US law, a work phone is generally the property of a person’s employer. The judge told Apple on Tuesday to provide an estimate of its cost to comply with her order, suggesting that the government will be expected to pay for the work.
Apple has provided default encryption on its iPhones since 2014, allowing any device’s contents to be accessed only by a user who knows the phone’s passcode. Previously, the company could use an extraction tool that would plug into the phone and allow it to respond to search warrant requests from the government.
The magistrate’s order requires that the software Apple provides be programmed to work only on Farook’s phone, and said Apple had five days to notify the court if it believed the ruling unreasonably burdensome.
It was not immediately clear what investigators believe they might find on Farook’s phone or why the information would not be available from third-party service providers, such as Google or Facebook, though investigators think the device may hold clues about who the couple communicated with and where they may have traveled.
The phone was running the newest version of the iPhone operating system. It was configured to erase data after 10 consecutive unsuccessful unlocking attempts. The FBI said the feature appeared to be active on Farook’s iPhone as of the last time he performed a backup.
Farook and Malik took pains to physically destroy two personally owned cellphones, crushing them beyond the FBI’s ability to recover information from them. They also removed a hard drive from their computer. It has not been found despite investigators diving for days for potential electronic evidence in a nearby lake.
Farook was not carrying his work iPhone during the attack. It was discovered in a subsequent search.
The judge didn’t spell out her rationale in her three-page order, but the ruling comes amid a similar case in the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
Investigators are still working to piece together a missing 18 minutes in Farook and Malik’s timeline for that day.
Investigators have concluded they were at least partly inspired by the Islamic State group; Malik’s Facebook page included a note pledging allegiance to the group’s leader around the time of the attack.
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