"On Sunday, March 20, 2016, an outside party demonstrated to the FBI a possible method for unlocking Farook's iPhone," the Justice Department's lawyers wrote in a court filing. "Testing is required to determine whether it is a viable method that will not compromise data on Farook's iPhone. If the method is viable, it should eliminate the need for the assistance from Apple...set forth in the All Writs Act Order in this case." The government is "cautiously optimistic" that this new strategy "will allow us to search the phone and continue our investigation." If authorities have found a software or system vulnerability into the iPhone, Apple's lawyers said they will file a motion to obtain discovery and insist on knowing everything about the method-including who the third party is that discovered it and the nature of the zero-day vulnerability.
The government has been heavily criticized in the past for withholding information about vulnerabilities in software so that law enforcement and intelligence agencies can use them to exploit. The White House insisted last year that it discloses about 90 percent of vulnerabilities to software makers so that they can be patched instead of exploited.
And if you can't trust the White House, ummm, fugettaboutit.
But the government has also admitted that if a software hole has "a clear national security or law enforcement" use, officials may choose to keep information about the vulnerability secret in order to continue exploiting it.
That's assuming they could actually keep a secret, without Hillary's e-mail leaking it.
The FBI's change in tactics may partially be a result of the wave of public support Apple has received in its case, along with a slew of amicus briefs filed to the court on its behalf. Everyone from privacy activists, to law professors, to iPhone-focused hackers, to fellow tech giants including Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Facebook made statements in Apple's defense, arguing that the software the FBI demanded Apple create represented an undue burden on the company, set a dangerous precedent, and would ultimately lead to the weakening of Americans' digital security.
Most observers of the case have guessed from the start that Farook’s phone likely didn’t contain much data of interest; investigators had already accessed an older backup of the phone, and admit that a metadata analysis also found no evidence of terrorist ties.