You have commented 339 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
-Lurid Crime Tales-
Senator says FBI paid $900K for iPhone hacking tool
2017-05-06
[ABC] Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Senate committee that oversees the FBI, said publicly this week that the government paid $900,000 to break into the locked iPhone of a gunman in the San Bernardino, California, shootings.
That would be the December 3rd, 2015 gun and bomb attack workplace incident by Syed Farook, also known as Syed Rizwan Farook, and Tashfeen Malik on his office Christmas party. Mr. Farook was an American-born Punjabi-American, so naturally he went back to the old country for a suitable wife -- she was working on her PhD in pharmaceutical science and was connected to Lal Masjid, the notorious Red Mosque in Islamabad that in 2015 was connected to ISIS, making her just the one for him. They were known wolves connected to the extremist scene in California and on social media to Al Nusra and Al Shabaab...
The FBI considers the figure to be classified information. It also has protected the identity of the vendor it paid to do the work. Both pieces of information are the subject of a federal lawsuit by The Associated Press and other news organizations that have sued to force the FBI to reveal them.

An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment Friday.

Feinstein cited the amount while questioning FBI Director James Comey at a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing Wednesday.

"I was so struck when San Bernardino happened and you made overtures to allow that device to be opened, and then the FBI had to spend $900,000 to hack it open," said Feinstein, D-Calif. "And as I subsequently learned of some of the reason for it, there were good reasons to get into that device."

Comey hinted at a ballpark range last year, saying the government paid more than he would earn in his remaining seven years on the job, an amount that would have been more than $1 million. He has called the sum "worth it."
Posted by:Besoeker

#8  I am losing confidence in the FBI. If they can't investigate the NSA enough to appropriate NSA's iPhone hacking tools then they have no insight at all into what is really going on.
Posted by: Crerenter Poodle8043   2017-05-06 15:33  

#7  What was the right way?

When Apple revealed their corporate entity was bigger than Patriotic America, or that they didn't know how to unlock the device either, it became time for extraordinary measures.

We found the G. had no balls to force Apple, but they had a fat checkbook. The apparent solution is proprietary, the Feds can now crack Apple HDWR encryption (and perhaps others), covert international partners may now also have the capability and the FBI now has a math skunkworks outside the normal government channels that is free from oversight inspection and exposure(for a while).

I think they did pretty good. I wonder that Apple as an commercial entity shouldn't be considered a foreign sympathizer subject to audit and tariffs.
Posted by: Skidmark   2017-05-06 13:32  

#6  They went about it all the wrong way. What was the right way?
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418   2017-05-06 12:06  

#5  #3 is more correct. They had to go through alot to get this phone un-locked. Even went to Congress.

They went about it all the wrong way.
Posted by: newc   2017-05-06 11:14  

#4  Yeah. If in-house capability is so special, whyn't the FBI have its own firearms factory?
Posted by: M. Murcek   2017-05-06 10:15  

#3  The government didn't have an in-house capability?
Posted by: JohnQC 2017-05-06 09:54


Well, look at it this way - if the Gummint was working on one and it ever got out, that would be a sh!tstorm of near-Biblical proportions. The Bureau, on the other hand, probably thought like this: They knew perfectly well that there were tools out there to do whatever they needed, when they needed them they could buy them or contract them, and then they could stand up and say "We didn't have one when we needed it, so now we're going to keep hold of this."

Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski   2017-05-06 10:13  

#2  the government paid $900,000 to break into the locked iPhone of a gunman in the San Bernardino, California, shootings.

The government didn't have an in-house capability?
Posted by: JohnQC   2017-05-06 09:54  

#1  Paul Combetta at Platte River Networks ?
Posted by: Besoeker   2017-05-06 08:57  

00:00