The FBI paid more than $1.34 million to hack into the iPhone 5c of dead San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook, agency director James Comey admitted on Thursday.
A group of four tech industry associations — representing businesses like Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Google — have published an open letter opposing a draft bill by U.S. Senators Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein, which would make it possible for courts to order help bypassing encryption.
Law enforcement sources on Tuesday said that while an iPhone linked to last year's San Bernardino shootings has yielded no actionable intel, the dearth of new information has actually helped the FBI investigation into the terror attack.
Chinese authorities have asked Apple to turn over source code twice in the past two years, but the company refused in both cases, Apple general counsel Bruce Sewell told a hearing of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on Tuesday.
In its latest report on government requests for user information released Monday, Apple revealed U.S. law enforcement agencies lodged 1,015 requests for customer account information affecting 5,192 users in the second half of 2015.
While reports covered the broad strokes of Apple's conference call on encryption last Friday, bits of information are still surfacing, including an interesting statistic that reveals an average iPhone user unlocks their device about 80 times a day.
Apple engineers jumped on a conference call with press outlets shortly following Friday's New York court filing to tout the company's encryption efforts, while at the same time making clear that those protocols are in place to protect against hackers, not government intrusion.
Apple in a court filing Friday argued the FBI has "utterly failed" to prove necessity in its request for assistance in extracting data from a passcode-locked iPhone related to a New York drug case.
Apple's top lawyer is scheduled to appear before a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee next week, presumably to offer testimony on the pitfalls of granting law enforcement privileged access to encrypted devices.
Rather than seeking Apple's assistance, the FBI plans to work with its own San Diego Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory to obtain data from a seized iPhone 5c involved in a murder investigation, if it is awarded a warrant to do so.
Apple, in an effort to protect customers against a heretofore unknown iPhone vulnerability, has sought information regarding a working encryption exploit used by the Justice Department in its investigation into the San Bernardino terror attacks. A new report, however, suggests the passcode bypass technique will likely remain secret.
A report Wednesday claims FBI agents have not yet discovered useful information from an iPhone 5c linked to last year's San Bernardino terror attack, a device that just last month was at the center of a high-profile court battle involving Apple.
Two high-ranking U.S. senators on Wednesday released to the public a proposed bill that would grant courts the authority to order tech companies dealing in hardware, software or services help law enforcement agencies gain access to encrypted communications.
In the latest development of what appears to be a never-ending guessing game, a report on Tuesday claims FBI officials purchased a zero day exploit from a group of professional security researchers as part of its successful effort in breaking into an iPhone 5c linked to last year's San Bernardino terror attack.
Two weeks after the Federal Bureau of Investigation withdrew its legal action against Apple, agency director James Comey on Tuesday said the difficulty of squaring national security policies with consumer privacy rights was the most onerous of his government career.
Recently unsealed court documents show Apple in February was ordered to assist the FBI in accessing an iPhone tied to a Boston court case, but the government has seemingly abandoned its pursuit as the ruling fell short of forcing Apple to bypass its own security.
A proposed U.S. Senate draft bill that would give courts the authority to compel tech company compliance in law enforcement requests to encrypted data leaked online Thursday night, and by Friday security experts and civil rights advocates were dismantling the policy, calling it ill-informed and potentially dangerous.
Saying that whatever method was used by the FBI will have a "short shelf life," Apple on Friday revealed it has no intention to sue the bureau in an effort to find out how it hacked the iPhone 5c used by a terrorist in California.
The U.S. Justice Department plans to continue seeking legal action against Apple, in an effort to force the company to create a way to unlock an iPhone that is said to be a crucial part of a drug investigation.
A report chronicling Apple's history of handling government data requests says the company received, and willingly complied with, its first court order to help unlock an iPhone in 2008. Apple continued on that path until around 2014, when the wider tech industry began clamping down on product security in light of revelations regarding government snooping operations.
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Roger Fingas
Mikey Campbell
AppleInsider Staff
Neil Hughes
