FBI Allegedly Paid More Than $1 Million To Get Into Encrypted iPhone… And To Avoid Setting Legal Precedent It Didn't Like (original) (raw)

from the just-saying dept

On Thursday, FBI Director James Comey suggested that the FBI paid over a million dollars to a group of hackers who helped it get into Syed Farook’s encrypted work iPhone. Of course, just as pretty much everyone predicted, the FBI found nothing of value on the iPhone. This was hardly a surprise. It was a case where we already know who did it, and that they were already dead. We also know that they destroyed their two personal iPhones, leaving open the question why anyone would think there was anything valuable on the work iPhone.

Specifically, Comey said that buying the exploit from this group cost the FBI “more than I will make in the remainder of this job, which is seven years and four months, for sure.” Comey makes 185,100peryearathisjob,implyingthatbuyingtheexploitcostatleast185,100 per year at his job, implying that buying the exploit cost at least 185,100peryearathisjob,implyingthatbuyingtheexploitcostatleast1.3 million or so.

This has, understandably caused some to ask how it could possibly be worth it to pay so much money for an exploit that everyone must have known was worthless.

It would have been more responsible to give the FBI?s slush fund over to the victims? families than to pursue such an obvious non-lead.

— Jonathan Zdziarski (@JZdziarski) April 21, 2016

Things that would've better served the American public with $1.3M than Comey's goose chase: Mental health funding.

— Jonathan Zdziarski (@JZdziarski) April 21, 2016

Of course, that is taking a slightly narrow view on things, considering that many people believe, strongly, that the FBI’s motive here was really to extricate itself from the legal dispute over the phone that had the very strong potential of ending with a bad precedent for the FBI and the DOJ. When looked at through that lens, $1.3 million or whatever seems like very little money to pay…

Filed Under: doj, fbi, hack, iphone, james comey, precedent, syed farook
Companies: apple