The FBI has abandoned its attempt to force Apple to help it break into the San Bernardino gunman’s iPhone, after it found another way to access the device’s contents without the company’s help.
The move ends a high-stakes stand-off between the technology group and the US government but leaves unresolved the wider issue of how far companies should be required to modify their products to help investigators. In their respective statements, the Department of Justice left open the door to future legal clashes with Silicon Valley over encryption and data security, while Apple said it would continue to strengthen the protections built into its devices.
On Monday afternoon, Judge Sheri Pym of the Central District of California granted the DoJ’s request to vacate, or cancel, the court order she granted a month and a half ago.
The order had required Apple to write new software that would prevent the iPhone from automatically wiping its contents as investigators made repeated attempts to guess the passcode that locked away its contents.
The device in question was used by Syed Rizwan Farook, who along with Tashfeen Malik, his wife, killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California, last December.
Apple had vigorously resisted the order, claiming that it would involve creating a “back door” that would weaken the security and privacy for all iPhone owners. Many Silicon Valley companies had rallied behind Apple as it contested the legal and constitutional basis for the demand. “This case should never have been brought,” Apple said on Monday night.
A week ago, on the eve of a hearing before Judge Pym to debate the case, the government unexpectedly asked for the courtroom session to be delayed for up to two weeks.
Despite initially arguing that the “assistance sought can only be provided by Apple”, the FBI said that an outside party had approached it with a potential way to break into the device. The unnamed group was prompted to come forward by the huge publicity surrounding the case, it said.
Little more than a week later, the unspecified new technique proved successful.
“The government has now successfully accessed the data stored on Farook’s iPhone and therefore no longer requires the assistance from Apple” that had been ordered in February’s court ruling, the government wrote in a filing on Monday.
The DoJ added in a statement that the FBI was “currently reviewing the information on the phone”, which investigators hope might provide clues to the couple’s links to terrorist groups.
However, despite abandoning its attempt to force Apple to help its investigation this time, the government did not rule out a similar legal challenge to Apple or other tech groups in a future case.
“It remains a priority for the government to ensure that law enforcement can obtain crucial digital information to protect national security and public safety, either with co-operation from relevant parties, or through the court system when co-operation fails,” the DoJ said. “We will continue to pursue all available options for this mission, including seeking the co-operation of manufacturers and relying upon the creativity of both the public and private sectors.”
Even if the FBI’s new technique does work against more than just Farook’s model of iPhone, Apple said that it would harden its technology further against hackers — setting the stage for another potential confrontation if and when investigators find themselves frustrated again in the future.
“We will continue to help law enforcement with their investigations, as we have done all along, and we will continue to increase the security of our products as the threats and attacks on our data become more frequent and more sophisticated,” Apple said.
For instance, Apple is working to bolster the encryption used in its iCloud online storage system, people close to the company have told the Financial Times.
Apple added that it remained committed to participating in a “national conversation about our civil liberties, and our collective security and privacy”.
“Apple believes deeply that people in the United States and around the world deserve data protection, security and privacy,” it said. “Sacrificing one for the other only puts people and countries at greater risk.”
Alex Abdo, staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union, which supported Apple’s case in court filings, said the end of the San Bernardino case was “just a delay of an inevitable fight over whether the FBI can force Apple to undermine the security of its own products. We would all be more secure if the government ended this reckless effort.”
In a conference call with reporters, the DoJ declined to disclose the identity of the group that had helped it break into the iPhone or whether the same technique could be applied to other devices in the possession of police or the FBI.
“At present we know that this tool works on the iPhone 5c that was recovered in the San Bernardino case, which was running a version of iOS 9,” an official said.
He did not say whether the government would tell Apple itself how the iPhone was cracked open. “We can’t comment on the possibility of future disclosures at the present time,” the official added.
Apple’s attorneys said last week that they did not know how investigators were trying to break into its device, but that it wanted to find out.
Andrew Crocker, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s civil liberties team, said that the government’s own policy for security disclosures should mean there is a “very strong bias in favour of informing Apple of the vulnerability”, allowing the iPhone maker to fix whatever flaw had been exploited by the FBI and its partner.
“Any decision to withhold a security vulnerability for intelligence or law enforcement purposes leaves ordinary users at risk from malicious third parties who also may use the vulnerability,” Mr Crocker said.
(Published by Financial Times - March 29, 2016)