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The FBI will not have to disclose the name of the vendor that it paid to hack into an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino terrorists:
A federal court ruled yesterday that the FBI does not have to disclose either the name of the vendor used or price the government paid to hack into the iPhone SE of mass shooter Syed Farook, according to ZDNet. The device became embroiled in a heated national controversy and legal standoff last year when Apple refused to help the FBI develop a backdoor into it for the purpose of obtaining sensitive information on Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik, both of whom participated in the terrorist attack that left 14 dead in San Bernardino, California in December 2015.
The Justice Department originally filed a lawsuit against Apple to compel it to participate by creating a special version of its mobile operating system, something Apple was vehemently against because of the risk such a tool posed to users. But very soon after, the government withdrew from the case when a third-party vendor secretly demonstrated to the FBI a workable method to bypass the iPhone's security system. Three news organizations — the Associated Press, Vice News, and USA Today — filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit in September 2016 to reveal details of the hacking method used. Because it was not clear how many phones the workaround could be used on, and whether the FBI could use it surreptitiously in the future, the lawsuit was seeking information that would be pertinent to the public and security researchers around the globe.
Previously: Washington Post: The FBI Paid "Gray Hat(s)", Not Cellebrite, for iPhone Unlock
FBI Can't Say How It Hacked IPhone 5C
Meeting Cellebrite - Israel's Master Phone Crackers
Cellebrite Appears to Have Been Hacked
Senator Dianne Feinstein Claims That the FBI Paid $900,000 to Break Into a Locked iPhone
Related: FBI Resists Revealing its Tor User Identification Methods in Court
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 02 2017, @06:29PM (1 child)
Of course they don't... transparency is for losers. You should at all times just blindly trust the Powers That Be</sarc>
(can we get a <cynical> tag as well because that's really what I needed here!)
(Score: 5, Funny) by takyon on Monday October 02 2017, @06:37PM
Pretty much everyone here is deeply cynical so <idealistic />, <naïve />, or <credulous /> tags might be better.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by nobu_the_bard on Monday October 02 2017, @07:15PM (1 child)
Wow. I bet the that developed this "phone hack" are hanging their heads in shame that their defense is that they're more incompetent than the client that hired them for their expertise.
I know I'm not being totally fair here ("cyberattack" mitigation not being the same as a phone hack) but I'd expect they're related enough to be at least minimally competent.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 02 2017, @09:09PM
Or they are quite pissed to be used as the scape goat after they saved the FBI from having deal with the fallout of hacking the phone. I'm sure they're still happy to remain unidentified so they don't become the target of apple fan bois.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 03 2017, @07:25AM
Are these FOIA requests pretty much useless?
Or is it just that we only hear about the ones that get rejected?
Then again, all the ones we hear about is the ones that matter, so why wouldn't we hear about a successful FOIA request that mattered? Maybe it's just the ones that actually matter that get rejected?