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Government Privacy Security The Courts United States

AP, Vice, USA Today Sue FBI For Info On Phone Hack of San Bernardino Shooter (usatoday.com) 49

Posted by msmash from the right-for-access dept.
Three news organizations filed a lawsuit Friday seeking information about how the FBI was able to break into the locked iPhone of one of the gunmen in the December terrorist attack in San Bernardino. From a USA Today report: The Justice Department spent more than a month this year in a legal battle with Apple over it could force the tech giant to help agents bypass a security feature on Syed Rizwan Farook's iPhone. The dispute roiled the tech industry and prompted a fierce debate about the extent of the government's power to pry into digital communications. It ended when the FBI said an "outside party" had cracked the phone without Apple's help. The news organizations' lawsuit seeks information about the source of the security exploit agents used to unlock the phone, and how much the government paid for it. It was filed in federal court in Washington by USA TODAY's parent company, Gannett, the Associated Press and Vice Media. The FBI refused to provide that information to the organizations under the Freedom of Information Act. The lawsuit charges that "there is no lawful basis" for the FBI to keep the records secret.
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AP, Vice, USA Today Sue FBI For Info On Phone Hack of San Bernardino Shooter More

AP, Vice, USA Today Sue FBI For Info On Phone Hack of San Bernardino Shooter

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  • Why bother? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bev_tech_rob ( 313485 ) on Friday September 16, 2016 @01:23PM (#52901593)

    Yea, they will release the document, but it will be 100% redacted....so total waste of time...

    • Re:Why bother? (Score:5, Informative)

      by mewsenews ( 251487 ) on Friday September 16, 2016 @02:17PM (#52902165) Homepage

      It's the principle of the thing.

      Apple is winning against these requests from the government, but barely. Wikipedia says [wikipedia.org] that a judge ruled in their favour in Brooklyn, but in the most publicized case - the case of the San Bernadino terrorists, the FBI withdrew their request rather than have Apple's objection decided on by the judge.

      Dragging these assholes into the sunlight and making their methods a matter of public record makes things better for everybody.

    • Yea, they will release the document, but it will be 100% redacted....so total waste of time...

      Well,a single page with one black line across a third of the page's width. That would tell us a lot.

  • In a roundabout but easy calculable way - it came to about $1.3M.

    "Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey said on Thursday the agency paid more to get into the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters than he will make in the remaining seven years and four months he has in his job. According to figures from the FBI and the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, Comey's annual salary as of January 2015 was $183,300. Without a raise or bonus, Comey will make $1.34 million over the remainder

    • Add in a large amount of legal fees. Which are probably MUCH more than $1.3M

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cdrudge ( 68377 )

      The actual quote was:

      "A lot. More than I will make in the remainder of this job, which is seven years and four months for sure," Comey said. "But it was, in my view, worth it."

      $1.3M would be the lower bounds of what would be paid. If the FBI paid $10M or $100M it'd still make his statement correct, but absolutely meaningless.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nomadic ( 141991 )
      Seems kind of silly for them to make his pay a metric for the cost of an investigation, particularly a fairly important investigation like this one.
      • The investigation may have been important, but breaking the iPhone absolutely was not important. They knew right from the start that this wasn't the phone that the shooters used to plan the action with-- they used different phones for that, and a different computer, all of which they thoroughly destroyed beyond the ability of the FBI to recover.

        Nobody expected anything to be on it, and nothing was.

        A cynical person might think that the point of breaking the iPhone security wasn't to see what was on the ph

        • I recall a case a few years back where they tried to get a guy to give up his pw for something and failed. Shortly thereafter they cracked it anyway "another way", where that probably meant something they preferred not to potentially have to expose.

        • Given that people sometimes make mistakes handling their secrets no matter how careful they intend to be, it seems reasonable that they wanted to check any data storage device that could possibly have held some information relevant to the crime.

          Then again, I was a big fan of "Columbo".
    • So, in other words, it's saying that it's more than his job's worth.

  • DMCA? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Moof123 ( 1292134 )

    I thought that intentionally circumventing these things was illegal. Did the FBI arrest the owners of the company after they demonstrated the ability to hack the phone?

  • News organisations are always wanting to protect their sources, so now they want the FBI to give out theirs? So the next time they are asked to give their sources on something are they going to? Not likely. Also, what reason do they need to know who or how it was cracked? As for costs, being tax payers money, that should be disclosed but that's about it.

    • News organisations are always wanting to protect their sources, so now they want the FBI to give out theirs? So the next time they are asked to give their sources on something are they going to? Not likely. Also, what reason do they need to know who or how it was cracked? As for costs, being tax payers money, that should be disclosed but that's about it.

      FBI Mission & Prioritiest [fbi.gov]

      Just a quick glance at this should highlight some answers to your question for you, but in case the chips are still not falling into place, I'll highlight the reasons that most resonate with me personally.

      A constitutional responsibility to protect my privacy [wikipedia.org]

      The FBI is expected to respect my right to privacy, not hide the master-keys away in case we need it later.

      The FBI is expected to Protect the United States against cyber-based attacks and high-technology crimes, not claim mo

    • News organisations are always wanting to protect their sources, so now they want the FBI to give out theirs?

      No, they want the evidence, not the source. Not to mention that everybody already knows who the source is, and also that he was dead before he even became the source. Completely ignoring that he was the main perpetrator in the case. Why the hell would this source need protection?

  • The news organizations' lawsuit seeks information about the source of the security exploit agents used to unlock the phone, and how much the government paid for it. It was filed in federal court in Washington by USA TODAY's parent company, Gannett, the Associated Press and Vice Media. The FBI refused to provide that information to the organizations under the Freedom of Information Act. The lawsuit charges that "there is no lawful basis" for the FBI to keep the records secret.

    If President Obama was really committed to running the most transparent administration in US history (remember, this was probably the thing he promised most frequently during his 2008 campaign), then he would order the FBI director to release the information without them having to be taken to court. But, I won't hold my breath. I'm just saying...

    • You do realize that the single biggest complaint people have about the government is "overreach" and "too much government intrusion". So this would just put another nail in the coffin, not to mention the republicans would use it as a cudgel to complain about "the democrats are against the police and due process". Sadly we have a delicate situation that is best left to the courts because anything else is going to get politicized like mad.

      • Sadly we have a delicate situation that is best left to the courts because anything else is going to get politicized like mad.

        We have a situation where the central issue is the interpretation of the law as applied to a particular situation and determination of whether an executive-branch's actions are in obedience to it. The courts are the appropriate venue for decisions of this nature.

      • You do realize that the single biggest complaint people have about the government is "overreach" and "too much government intrusion".

        Hence why being open about something like this is so important. It helps people understand government actions that have the potential affect their privacy.

        So this would just put another nail in the coffin, not to mention the republicans would use it as a cudgel to complain about "the democrats are against the police and due process".

        In what coffin? So what if the Republicans will use it to browbeat the Democrats? The Democrats use plenty of real and invented situations to browbeat the Republicans. Welcome to politics. The truth is that many Democrats campaign on platforms relating to civil liberties, then don't come through. Just like lots of Republicans campaign on platforms r

  • They won't release the info because the "hack" was silly silly silly. Probably related to shoulder surfing.

    Maybe they found a friend/coworker who saw the code being entered on the phone. Or maybe they got some security footage from a bank/store/etc. and could see him type in the code. Whatever the actual case, they didn't actual hack the software, but found a very silly workaround.

    Either that, or they didn't hack in at all. Saying that they did was simply a lie to save face.

    • actually it's much much simpler than this, I had a method to do it, but they didn't take me up on it.

      Remember this phone was pre-secure enclave. ;)
      -nb

  • Multiple FOIA Exemptions probably apply (Score:3)

    by HighOrbit ( 631451 ) on Friday September 16, 2016 @02:10PM (#52902079)
    I don't think they are going to get very far with the lawsuit under FOIA. See https://www.foia.gov/faq.html#... [foia.gov]

    Exemption 1: Information that is classified to protect national security.

    Exemption 4: Trade secrets or commercial or financial information that is confidential or privileged.

    Exemption 7(E). Would disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions

    So, beside the national security issue, the technique may be a trade secret of the contractor whom the FBI hired to pull off the hack. Next, the hack was clearly used as a technique for a law enforcement investigation.
  • If the local press is quick a local walk in FOIA request at a state, city, town, parish level for costs related to a federal state task force hardware can be very productive.
    Show any needed local "police issued press ID" to be granted your full existing constitutional rights again, access and get reading, ask for a copy while waiting, right to photograph. Offers to post out, collect later in person, need to find the only staff with access will just result in full redactions or nothing been found later.
    T

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