FBI should unlock San Bernandino shooter’s iPhone without Apple's help: Lawmaker
02 Mar 2016
The FBI should try to copy the hard drive of an iPhone used by the San Bernardino shooter, without triggering the device's auto-erase functions, thus obviating the need to take Apple to court, a company executive said yesterday.
According to Bruce Sewell, Apple's senior vice president and general counsel, rather than forcing Apple to help defeat the iPhone password security that erased the device's contents after 10 unsuccessful attempts, it might be possible to make hundreds of copies of the hard drive.
Apple did not know the condition of the iPhone used by the San Bernardino mass shooter Syed Rizwan Farook, so it was not clear whether mirroring the hard drive would work, but it was possible, Sewell said during a congressional hearing.
Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican and former car-alarm entrepreneur, was the first to suggest that the FBI try to copy the iPhone's hard drive.
The design of the older model iPhone 5c might allow investigators to remove its hard drive and make multiple copies, according to Issa. Ten-word passwords could then be run by investigators on each copy until they found the correct password, he added.
''The FBI is the premier law enforcement organization, with laboratories that are second to none in the world,'' Issa told FBI director James Comey. ''Are you testifying today that you and / or contractors that you employ could not achieve this without demanding that an unwilling partner do it?''
Meanwhile, FBI director James B Comey told lawmakers yesterday that his agents had ''engaged all parts of the US government'' to try to get into San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook's work iPhone -- with nothing to show for it.
Without naming agencies, Comey noted that all options had been exhausted, including assessing a flood of email suggestions from the public. According to Comey, there was no way to get a complete copy of the data on the passcode-locked iPhone 5c running the iOS 9 operating system without Apple's help.
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