FBI reportedly inflated statistics on encrypted cellphone threat

The FBI has for months bemoaned the threat encrypted cellphones pose to ongoing investigations, saying investigators were locked out of some 7,800 devices last year. A new report, however, claims the agency's figures are grossly inflated.

While an accurate tally has yet to be determined, the bureau likely encountered between 1,000 and 2,000 encrypted devices linked to criminal activity in 2017, The Washington Post reports.

In a statement issued on Tuesday, the FBI said an error in internal accounting methods led to repeated counting of phones listed on three separate databases. The issue, discovered about a month ago, resulted in repeated counting of encrypted devices tied to criminal investigations, the report said.

"The FBI's initial assessment is that programming errors resulted in significant over-counting of mobile devices reported,'' the FBI said in a statement.

A recalculation following the discovery put the correct number of encrypted devices at 1,200, but that figure is expected to change as the bureau undertakes a new internal audit.

Dubbed "Going Dark" by law enforcement and intelligence community officials, the implementation of strong smartphone encryption has become a particularly odious hindrance to law enforcement duties. The situation leaves agencies like the FBI with legal standing to unlock and access data within a phone, but without the technical capabilities to do so.

FBI director Christopher Wray often cites Going Dark as impetus for coaxing technology companies into building back doors into encryption systems for law enforcement agencies, or pressing Congress to enact laws that would mandate the same.

"To put it mildly, this is a huge, huge problem," Wray said last October. "It impacts investigations across the board narcotics, human trafficking, counterterrorism, counterintelligence, gangs, organized crime, child exploitation."

At the time, Wray said the FBI was unable to pull data from more than 6,900 devices. In a congressional hearing in December, he repeated the call for action, saying the bureau "was unable to access the content of approximately 7,800 mobile devices using appropriate and available technical tools, even though there was legal authority to do so."

The 7,800 phone figure came up again in a speech Wray delivered at the International Conference on Cyber Security in January, when the FBI head revealed the exact number of locked devices stood at 7,775. He repeated the inflated statistics in a series of public appearances, including a speech at Boston College in March.

"Each one of those nearly 7,800 devices is tied to a specific subject, a specific defendant, a specific victim, a specific threat," Wray said, shaping the inability to access stored data as a "major public safety issue."

Wray was in April asked by a congressional panel to explain the FBI's reasoning for taking Apple to court in 2016 as part of an investigation involving San Bernardino terror suspect Syed Rizwan Farook's iPhone 5c. Specifically, an inquiry carried out by the Office of the Inspector General found the agency failed to exhaust all options before demanding Apple's assistance.

Apple opposed the demands, arguing that a backdoor into one phone inherently weakens iOS as a platform. The company prepared to fight what was expected to be a precedent-setting legal battle until the FBI dropped the case after a third party approached the agency with an unlocking solution.

Since then, privacy advocates and tech companies, including Apple, have fought proposals that would force smartphone makers to build backdoors into their products. In March, for example, Apple SVP of software engineering Craig Federighi argued against a renewed push for backdoor access, saying, "Proposals that involve giving the keys to customers' device data to anyone but the customer inject new and dangerous weaknesses into product security."

As for the FBI's flawed phone counting practices, the agency says that while the numbers were incorrect, public safety is still at risk by the Going Dark threat.

"Going Dark remains a serious problem for the FBI, as well as other federal, state, local and international law enforcement partners," the bureau said in a statement. "The FBI will continue pursuing a solution that ensures law enforcement can access evidence of criminal activity with appropriate legal authority."

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18 Comments

buzdots

said about 5 years ago

The FBI fabricating something to get what what they want? You got to be kiddin' me - tell me this is a dream! /s

radarthekat

said about 5 years ago

Let’s talk about device security and backdoors, in a simple manner. Let’s first compare an iPhone, for example, with a safe that you might buy for your home. But this safe is from a company that really takes security seriously. And so they sell you a safe that comes with a stack of rice paper (dissolvable in water) and a pen with dissolvable ink to write on the rice paper. The idea is, you write down your personal information, passwords, etc, information you’d otherwise have to perfectly remember, on the rice paper and then you put that in the safe and lock it.

Oh, and this safe comes with a special set of internal mechanisms, plus a small tank of water, such that if the safe is disturbed or improperly opened, the rice paper is submerged into the tank of water.

Now, it might be that an owner of such a safe may write on his rice paper a terrorist plot and the contact info of his associates in that plot. So the government, upon arresting or killing that person on the day the plot was carried out would certainly have reason to want access to the stack of rice paper in his safe.

The question is, should the government have the right to demand of the company that manufactured the safe a means of opening the safe other than by knowing the combination, which the customer set and would therefore be know to nobody other than the dead or captured terrorist?

This conceptualization of the problem removes from the discussion smartphones and their many uses, and focuses the issue on whether we should have any external storage of our internal thoughts that is as sacrosanct as our internal mind, accessible only via our own willingness to expose it? Only through accepted interrogation techniques should you be able to persuade a captured terrorist to give up
information in his head, and that avenue is eliminated should he be dead. And only through accepted safe cracking techniques (with a warrant) should you be able to access information in his safe, and that avenue is eliminated should you trigger the built-in destruct mechanism.

Well, that’s my view of it, anyway. I have a different view regarding information being transmitted over publicly accessible infrastructure like the internet or a phone line, where an idea can be disseminated to many other minds and therefore could lever that infrastructure to subvert social values or strictures, and therefore would be anathema to the purpose of that infrastructure (and therefore should be open to inspection by authorities). A subject already covered by existing wiretap laws, which I generally agree with.

chasm

said about 5 years ago

“Going dark” is propaganda scaremongering BS. If you’re using a cell phone at all, you are not by definition “dark,” as your service provider can and does collect much more data about you than Apple does. About the only thing Apple may have on you that your carrier doesn’t is how many times you accessed one of their apps. I have to say flatly I used to have a lot of respect for the FBI but these last two directors (Mr Comey and now Mr Wray) have totally screwed that up; the former by politicizing the agency, the latter by flat-out lying to scare tech-ignorant lawmakers and the public into letting the government become Big Brother.