A US magistrate ordered Apple on Tuesday to help the Obama administration hack into an encrypted iPhone belonging to one of the shooters in the December attack in San Bernardino, California, that killed 14 people, in a first-of-its-kind ruling that pits digital privacy against national security interests.
The ruling by Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym, a former federal prosecutor, requires Apple to supply highly specialised software the FBI can load onto the county-owned work iPhone to bypass a self-destruct feature, which erases the phone’s data after too many unsuccessful attempts to unlock it.
The FBI wants to be able to try different combinations in rapid sequence until it finds the right one.
The Obama administration, which has embraced stronger encryption as a way to keep consumers safe on the Internet, had struggled to find a compelling example to make its case.
The ruling on Tuesday tied the problem to the deadliest terrorist attack on US soil since the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Syed Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, killed 14 people in a 2 December shooting at a holiday luncheon for Farook’s co-workers. The couple later died in a gun battle with police.
Federal prosecutors told the judge in a court application Tuesday that they were not able to access a work phone used by Farook because they don’t know his passcode and Apple has not cooperated. Under US law, a work phone is generally the property of a person’s employer. The judge told Apple to provide an estimate of its cost to comply with her order, suggesting that the government will be expected to pay for the work.
Apple has provided default encryption on its iPhones since 2014, allowing any device’s contents to be accessed only by the user who knows the phone’s passcode.
The Cupertino, California-based company did not immediately respond to messages from The Associated Press asking about the case.
The order requires that the software Apple provides be programmed to work only on Farook’s phone, but it was not clear how readily that safeguard could be circumvented. The order said Apple has five days to notify the court if it believes the ruling is unreasonably burdensome.
The couple took pains to physically destroy two personally owned cell phones, crushing them beyond the FBI’s ability to recover information from them. They also removed a hard drive from their computer; it has not been found despite investigators diving for days for potential electronic evidence in a nearby lake.
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)