Rachel Mack
The Justice Department announced Monday that it had found an alternative method to unlocking the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone without any help from Apple. The agency has ended the legal battle with the tech company to assist in the investigation of the mass shooting that had taken place last December by Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik.
Concern about the security of Apple’s products has now come to the forefront. At this time, federal officials have not disclosed the method that was used. According to Esha Bhandari, a staff lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union, she says, “from a legal standpoint, what happened in the San Bernardino case doesn’t mean the fight is over.”
She adds that the government typically goes through a process where it decides whether to disclose information about certain security issues so the manufacturers can fix them. “I would hope they would give that information to Apple so that it can patch any weaknesses,” Bhandari said, “but if the government classifies the tool, that suggests it may not.”
The FBI are hoping that the phone would provide insight into the planning of the attacks, and the movements of the shooters in the hours after they shot and killed 14 people inside the Inland Regional Center. It is possible they may not find any useful information on the phone, but FBI investigators have begun examining its contents and have yet to identify any relevant details.
They probably just got help from my ex.