The FBI has been able to access data from the iPhone of slain terror suspect Syed Farook for a full week, but the bureau’s top lawyer told reporters Tuesday that “it’s simply too early” to say publicly if investigators recovered anything of interest.
“We’re now doing an analysis of that data, as we would in any other type of criminal terrorism investigation,” James Baker, the FBI’s general counsel, told attendees at a conference of the International Association of Privacy Professionals in Washington this week.
“We’re following normal investigative leads, trying to assess where that will take us,” Mr. Baker said, Politico reported. “And if and when it becomes appropriate to disclose it, we will.”
Even once the agency is done scouring Farook’s iPhone for evidence, Mr. Baker said any decision about publicly disclosing its contents “depends on what it is that we found,” he said.
Federal investigators had initially asked a District Court judge in California to compel Apple under the All Writs Act of 1789 to help authorities unlock an iPhone 5c that Farook had on him when he and his wife went on a shooting spree in San Bernardino in December that left 14 people dead.
Amid a fierce back-and-forth with iPhone manufacturer Apple, the Justice Department said in a March 28 filing that it has successfully accessed the data stored on Farook’s iPhone with the help of a third party and no longer required the company’s assistance.
Mr. Baker defended the Justice Department’s court battle with Apple, even if authorities aren’t yet certain if Farook’s cellphone will provide any relevant information.
“What I can say is it was worth the fight to make sure that we have turned over every rock that we can with respect to the investigation,” Mr. Baker said Tuesday. “I think we owe it to the victims and their families to make sure that we’ve pursued every logical lead.”
Also on Tuesday, Facebook’s WhatsApp messenger announced it was enabling end-to-end encryption by default, meaning upwards of a billion people who use the smartphone app can now communicate with one another using addition layers of security that can’t easily be cracked.
Asked to weigh in on the announcement, Mr. Baker said he app’s implementation of end-to-end encryption “presents us with a significant problem,” Buzzfeed reported.
“If the public does nothing, encryption like that will continue to roll out in a variety of different ways across the technological landscape,” Mr. Baker said. “You can say that’s good and you can say that’s bad. But the key thing is that it has costs. It has public safety costs. And folks have to understand that.
“The reality is that business decisions have consequences, and we have to figure out how to deal with that,” he said.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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