FBI unlocks shooter’s iPhone, flooded by hundreds of requests now
The FBI got into the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone with the help of an outside source. It evidently took two teenagers 6 1/2 hours and three liters of Mountain Dew to get into the recovered iPhone, or if you believe the government story, it was done by an outside source and now local prosecutors and law enforcement are clamoring to the FBI to unlock every single iPhone in their position.
We’re about to see that “…will only be used on this one iPhone for this one instance” the FBI was arguing turned into “here you go local law enforcement, plug it in and run this. You’ll need a password which we’ve set up as ‘password1’ to run this software”.
Stories I’ve read online have ranged from that the FBI broke into the iPhone to that an exploit master key was discovered that unlocks all iPhones. So as it stands, technology reporting isn’t exactly held up to the stringent standards it should be. Not that I can talk. I really should stick to reviewing microphones or something (which is also something I’m doing with this piece).
According to the news piece I was listening to (NPR,) local prosecutors across the US are attempting to find out how much it will cost them get the FBI involved to unlock confiscated iPhones or those that were discovered at crime scenes they can go through them for evidence.
If there is indeed a master key for all of these iPhones, then we can expect that that will be found shortly now that it’s known it exists. Perhaps for now, it’s best if this is all remains speculation and fades from view so that the perception of privacy, if not the actuality of it exists.
The inner privacy advocate in me secretly hopes they just found the password scribbled on a Post-it note on the bottom of the shooter’s keyboard, but I suspect the NSA or the three liters of cola had more to do with this than we’ll ever hear about.
I find myself not so much bothered by the fact that the FBI got into the iPhone, but that they didn’t really have to work all that hard for it seems. All of the headlines were just for show. Some outside source did this for them. Probably the NSA.
All of which could have been accomplished months ago if they took the iPhone to the shooter’s home, plugged it in, and let it sync.
Sorry for the rambling. This is the first time I’ve ever tried to completely “write” a story using voice to text and I tend to speak quite incoherently it seems.
