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The FBI has asked Apple to crack at least 17 devices since October
| Mashable | - |
Federal
prosecutors have used the All Writs Act to request Apple's help to
access suspects' devices at least 15 times since October 2015, newly
unsealed court records show.
The FBI has asked Apple to crack at least 17 devices since October
Image: Peter Kneffel, Picture Alliance/Associated Press
Federal prosecutors have used the All Writs Act to request Apple's help to access suspects' devices at least 15 times since October 2015, newly unsealed court records show. Each of these requests, including the San Bernardino one, is still pending.
The documents, which U.S. Magistrate Judge James Orenstein made public on Tuesday, include filings by Apple and the Justice Department debating federal investigators' efforts to require Apple's help to access an accused meth dealer's iPhone.
While that suspect has pleaded guilty, lawyers for Apple and the Justice Department say the matter "is not moot," albeit for different reasons.
Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, New York, say they still need the evidence on the defendant's phone to learn more about his customers and suppliers. Apple said it wants Orenstein to decide whether government can use a federal statute called the All Writs Act to "compel a third party like Apple to assist law enforcement in its investigative efforts by bypassing the security mechanisms on its device."
That question drew new scrutiny last week, when a federal judge in California ordered Apple to do just that with the iPhone once used by Syed Farook, one of the perpetrators of the shooting spree in San Bernardino, California. The FBI and Apple are currently embroiled in a legal battle over whether Apple must comply.
Prosecutors previously said they have sought — and Apple has complied with — at least 70 orders under the All Writs Act since 2008. But the newly released filings shed new light on at least a dozen cases in seven federal courts in which the government has asked Apple to help access data on suspects' devices over the past five months.
In one of the new filings related to the Brooklyn case, Apple included a table of nine cases in which requests for All Writs Act orders — compelling the company to assist in unlocking phones — have been pending since Oct. 8, 2015.
Instead, according to Apple's own published documents, the company could "perform this data extraction process on iOS devices running iOS 4 through iOS 7."
In the Brooklyn case, the prosecutor contends that it needs Apple's assistance to unlock the phone, which is running a version of iOS 7.
In other cases, the FBI has successfully been able to access data from phones running older versions of iOS using its own tools. It isn't clear why the FBI needed Apple's help accessing phones in these cases. Neither Apple nor the Justice Department were able to provide additional information about the cases on Tuesday.
Footnotes in the documents, which you can read below, revealed four cases in addition to the ones in Apple's table. These four from the footnotes, paired with the nine in the table plus the San Bernardino and Brooklyn cases mentioned above, bring the number of pending cases to at least 15 in Massachusetts, Illinois, California, Ohio and New York.
