Neil Hughes
The work-issued iPhone used by one of the shooters in the San Bernardino terrorist attack likely has "nothing of any value" saved on it, the police chief of the town has admitted in a new interview, though he still believes Apple should help the FBI crack into the encrypted handset.
"I'll be honest with you, I think that there is a reasonably good chance that there is nothing of any value on the phone," San Bernardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan said in an interview with NPR on Friday. "What we are hoping might be on the phone would be potential contacts that we would obviously want to talk to."
Burguan admitted he owns an iPhone and an iPad, and considers himself a "fan" of Apple products. But he also said law enforcement has an obligation to "leave no stone unturned" in their investigation of the attack, and not making an effort would be unfair to the victims and their families.
It's also possible, though he admitted it's unlikely, that the iPhone 5c in question could have details on a larger terrorist network or potential plots for future attacks.
"The probability is low, but it could be," Burguan said.
A U.S. magistrate judge has ordered Apple to comply with FBI requests to help extract data owned by one of the shooters involved in the December terrorist attack. Apple says it can't do that without creating a backdoor to its secure iOS platform — Â something the company is unwilling to do.
Thanks to a lawsuit filed by the U.S. government publicizing the dispute, the battle between Apple and the FBI has spilled over to the court of public opinion. A war of words has broken out, led by Apple CEO Tim Cook and FBI director James Comey, in which each side is working to paint the other as unreasonable.
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
AppleInsider Staff
Chip Loder
Malcolm Owen
54 Comments
Maybe get a few contacts out of a phone vs make millions of phones unsafe and foreign products more appealing. If it works out like the cloud fiasco we can drive another 100 billion out of the US economy. Which makes the USA stronger, having 100 billion dollars of economic activity or maybe a few bits of information that can probably be gathered elsewhere?
Contacts? If he called anyone, that would show up on his cell phone records right? No need to hack the iPhone.
Again, work phone. The personal phone was destroyed. This really should be mentioned in every article on this subject.
The Crazy Train just keeps chugging along.
"What we are hoping might be on the phone would be potential contacts that we would obviously want to talk to."
Contacts the murderer never, well, actually bothered to, you know, CONTACT, via that same phone? Because any and all "contacts" actually contacted would be present in the electronic service records for the phone already turned over to the FBI by Verizon and Apple would they not?