The good news is that the FBI was able to unlock the San Bernadino shooter’s iPhone 5c.
The bad news is that it might not be a treasure trove of information.
According to a recent report, despite having had access to all the data on the phone for more than a week, the FBI has apparently not yet found anything of value.
FBI general counsel James Baker told an International Association of Privacy Professionals conference that it was “too early” to say whether anything useful would be found, and that it may or may not choose to reveal the answer once it is certain.
“We’re now doing an analysis of that data, as we would in any other type of criminal terrorism investigation,’’ Mr. Baker said, adding: “That means we would follow logical leads.” But because the agency has only had access to the data for a short period of time, he said “it’s simply too early’’ to say whether anything found on the phone has been valuable to investigators […]
The FBI has yet to state whether the examination is complete and Baker said the agency itself is essentially feeling things out, as normally such decisions would be made behind closed doors.
Still, it’s worth remembering that this represents a brand new approach for the FBI and that it was the agency’s own decision to go to the press in the first place.
Time will tell if they pull anything significant from the iPhone and we’ll have additional details as they become available.
Via 9to5Mac and the Wall Street Journal