Top FBI officials informed congressional lawmakers this week that they have been unable to access the smartphone of the suspected gunman in the Dayton, Ohio, mass shooting, two sources told The Hill.
In a briefing about the weekend shootings in Dayton and El Paso, Texas, FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich told House Democrats that the agency is in possession of what’s believed to be Connor Betts’s primary phone but can’t open it because it requires a passcode, according to the two sources who took part in Wednesday's briefing.
[...] During the conference call with lawmakers, Bowdich said the FBI “can’t unlock” the device. If Betts was using a six- to eight-digit PIN, it could be months or even years before the FBI can crack the password, Bowdich said.
“We don’t know when we are going to get into the phone,” he told lawmakers, according to a source on the call, one of several FBI briefings this week involving members of Congress from both parties.
The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
[...] After a 2015 mass shooting left 14 people dead in San Bernardino, Calif., the FBI mounted a public campaign to pressure Apple into creating software that would give law enforcement access to one of the shooter’s phones. The Department of Justice asked a federal court in California to compel the iPhone maker into building a backdoor into the device.
Before the court could rule on the DOJ’s motion, the FBI announced it had managed to gain access into the phone with the help of an outside contractor, heading off what might have been a landmark battle with Silicon Valley over civil liberties.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 11 2019, @04:13AM (5 children)
Should notebooks and other paper things be unburnable so they law officers can read them later? Is that what they imply? What about mincing? Untearable paper too? Because it seems to always be about "backdoors".
Tought luck. They are not paid to have an easy job, sometimes they have to go with less clues than originally avaliable, not even a frontdoor because there is only rubble.
Oh! Also... maybe law officiers should learn to capture people alive instead of always going for maximum force, if they want to interrogate someone. They can have some training in Europe (paid holidays abroad...), it seems they manage to do it now and then, instead of always shooting to centre of mass until out of ammo.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 11 2019, @04:26AM (1 child)
But the Supreme Court has allowed it, and what fun is carrying a gun if you can't legally pump someone full of lead?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 11 2019, @04:54AM
They do call it a manhunt after all.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 11 2019, @07:50AM (2 children)
If someone is armed and is shooting at you or other people, you
wantneed to ensure they cannot continue firing. That is why you're supposed to shoot to kill.Protecting yourself and others is the paramount concern in these situations. Also, gunmen do not stand still waiting to get shot. They are usually moving and firing, and so are the people trying to stop them. Being a perfect marksman that can stop a gunman without killing him is not realistic.
In Europe they rarely have to deal with armed gunmen. When they do they use the same approach as the US: shoot to kill.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 11 2019, @03:20PM
And most of you still won't learn and don't care.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 11 2019, @11:58PM
No, in Europe they negotiate first, even when shoot. They are not happy killing people just because the other side shoot first, or just looks mad (or black, or "turban head") as seems too common in USA. In UK first police officer to appear is probably without firearms anyway. In Iceland they even apologized to the family of the dead [pri.org] when in 2013 the police killed the first person. Yet Europe had/has such things like IRA, ETA, Islamic terrorists, ex Iron Curtain organized crime, Italy Mafia, etc, and police try to capture armed people alive.
OTOH, in USA with so many armed people, or so is repeated in (European only?) news..., why rarely any mention of civilians defending themselves or even "neutralizing the threat"? Not wanting to publicize that or not happening at all? Sincerily, I do not remember any such case.
(Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Sunday August 11 2019, @04:15AM (6 children)
This one says they did unlock:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/dayton-ohio-shooter-cell-phone-unlocked-by-fbi/ [cbsnews.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday August 11 2019, @06:51AM (2 children)
We can all be thankful that they opened the phone before Betts was able to . . uhh, uhhh, uhhhhhh . . . decompose?
(Score: 0, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday August 11 2019, @04:30PM (1 child)
Well, it's good that they at least unlocked 1. I was about to mention that they refused to do it because the FBI are all in Hillary's pocket and wouldn't want to uncover any evidence that disproves that all spree-shooters are racist Trump-supporting White males.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 12 2019, @01:53AM
Oooooo, good thing you're an industry insider! Ha!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 11 2019, @07:40AM
Thank God the FBI can unlock our phones. Who knows, maybe he had plans to license gun ownership *shudder* Scary shit.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Fnord666 on Sunday August 11 2019, @04:23PM (1 child)
The FBI has unlocked a Samsung phone belonging to Connor Betts, the gunman who killed nine people in a mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio on Sunday, a Senate Democratic source told CBS News on Thursday. Betts, however, had multiple phones, and it's not clear whether the FBI has been able to unlock all of them.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 11 2019, @05:40PM
Did they try the old "glasses on the corpse" trick?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by dwilson on Sunday August 11 2019, @04:25AM (3 children)
Funny how the media conveniently forgets the other important bit of information from that incident, which is that nothing significant was found [cbsnews.com] on the iPhone in question, as was expected [theverge.com].
And every time a suspect uses a smartphone with encryption, the same old song and dance repeats itself. Can anyone dig up an incident where they broke in to a phone and DID find something useful? I can't think of one off-hand (Mind you, I don't care enough to google for it, either).
- D
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 11 2019, @04:37AM
It is not difficult to write your own app for iPhone and keep your own information encrypted deep further by Keychain API.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 11 2019, @05:29AM
A phone is something you put everything on. Must not have been a phone.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Username on Sunday August 11 2019, @01:09PM
>Can anyone dig up an incident where they broke in to a phone and DID find something useful?
Well, I assume gaining access to his phone will clue them in onto what apps he's using to communicate with other antifa members. The calls and texts may be logged but not data.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 11 2019, @05:41AM
At this point in time I believe it would be easier to hand FBI a napkin on which they can write the things they can fucking do. Yes I realize most of the napkin will be blank.
(Score: 5, Touché) by stretch611 on Sunday August 11 2019, @08:56AM (8 children)
Seriously, if they can't handle an investigation without an unlocked phone they are truly a Fscking Bunch of Idiots instead of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
You do not need a phone to get all the information posted to their social media accounts. It is out there and they can always subpoena the information from facebook, twitter, and every other platform that the person was on.
The cell phone companies can still provide all the call metadata for all the records of incoming and outgoing calls. The phone companies also have the location data.
They have a ton of people all ready to talk to the news about him all the way back from when he was in high school and before; after all, the news media already got a ton of information on what a whack job this guy was. How difficult is it for the FBI to get the same information and better due to all the private records it has access to from law enforcement, juvenile court, and school records?
Do your fscking job instead of expecting everything to be handed to you on a silver platter.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday August 11 2019, @11:58AM (2 children)
Great point. If they are looking for a manifesto, it has been PUBLISHED by the time the shooter acts. Check Facebook, Youtube, 8Chan, and the rest. If there is no manifesto, then family, classmates, workmates, and other associates probably have all the necessary details. Just start interviewing them. No one needs a record of every video he ever watched, every email he ever sent, or every entry into a private journal to convict and/or determine motivation. 999 times out of a thousand, that phone is just going to confirm data that can be had without the phone. That one in a thousand? You might find one or two minor details that weren't available from other sources. But, the whole world knew the sumbitch was pulling the trigger, without ever accessing his phone. GUILTY!!
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 11 2019, @01:43PM (1 child)
They don't care about finding out the reasons why the shooter did this. They are looking for contacts to charge with crimes.
The primary actor may be out of reach, but if they can find five people he interacted with on something that can be linked to the shooting, that's five people charged with conspiracy and anything else they can dump on. That will help several careers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 11 2019, @10:46PM
Again though, that type of information can be found by issuing subpoenas to his telco provider, facebook, etc.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Sunday August 11 2019, @12:20PM (3 children)
They are going to have their hands full investigating the Epstein death.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 11 2019, @05:44PM
Investigating or covering up?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 11 2019, @08:00PM (1 child)
It was an "assisted suicide", didnt you hear?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 12 2019, @03:29AM
Not legal in NY. Legal in NJ but only for NYers.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Username on Sunday August 11 2019, @01:18PM
Everytime they say they cannot do something, we later hear it magically happened anyway. Like the FBI cannot even give us the archived texts between Strzok and Page, but somehow people in the FBI are able to leak it. There is something really, really, rotten in the FBI.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 11 2019, @07:51PM (1 child)
"We need full backdoor access to everything, see why now?"
Rule 1 - never let a good disaster go un-used.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 12 2019, @03:24PM
I see your point. And the counter-question, "What did you expect to find on there, and why is it crucial to your case to have that information?" can go unanswered.