After gaining access to iPhone the US drops NY fight with Apple: On Friday, the US Justice Department dropped its effort to force Apple Inc to help unlocking the iPhone in a drug case in NY after that someone provided passcode to the authorities to access the device.
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The issue received more attention when the United States Justice Department had in the past dropped the fight against the iPhone maker in the San Bernardino killings. “Additionally, Apple said the Federal Bureau of Investigation did not adequately demonstrate that the method it used to unlock San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook’s iPhone would not work on the iPhone in the NY case”.
About DoJ move to withdraw the appeal seeking Apple’s help in unlocking Feng’s iPhone, Justice Department spokeswoman Emily Pierce said that law enforcement officials have managed to get access to the data they wanted.
The Cupertino, California-based Apple said in papers filed last week that the government’s request was extraordinary because there was likely minimal evidentiary value of any data on the phone, that Congress never authorized it to pursue such requests through the 1789 All Writs Act and there is no proof Apple’s assistance is necessary.
Feng-who claimed to have forgotten the passcode-pleaded guilty late a year ago, but the government and Apple kept the legal fight over the phone going in the hope of setting a legal precedent for such cases, the Guardian reports. The groups said they supported the government’s efforts to try to reverse a magistrate judge’s ruling earlier this year for Apple. Apple, among other things, engineered its new phone software such that it could no longer extract data for authorities.
“Yesterday evening, an individual provided the passcode to the iPhone at issue in this case”, U.S. Attorney Robert L. Capers wrote in a letter to the court Friday evening. According to reports, it seems that the DOJ has withdrawn their request to have Apple unlock the iPhone in the NY case. This marks the second time in less than a month that Apple is proven not to be the only one able to provide technical assistance during an investigation. As of Friday night, Apple representatives had not offered a statement on the latest case.
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As a result, Comey’s remarks strongly implied that the bureau paid at least $1.3 million to get onto the phone, which had belonged to Syed Rizwan Farook, who, with his wife, killed 14 people during the December 2 terror attack in San Bernardino, Calif. This time, it wasn’t because investigators were able to hack into the NY drug dealer’s smartphone that was the focus of the dispute, but rather because the passcode was provided to them by an unnamed source. Before his conviction, Feng said he had forgotten the passcode, prompting the government to demand Apple’s assistance.
