Former FBI Director James B. Comey was truthful when he told Congress that the bureau didn’t have the ability to unlock an iPhone belonging to the gunman in the December 2015 San Bernardino, California, terror attack, the Department of Justice’s Inspector General concluded in a new report Tuesday.
However, the Inspector General also found that miscommunication among the FBI divisions resulted in a delay getting a third party to unlock the cellphone belonging to Syed Rizwan Farook, who along with his wife, killed 17 people in the attack.
In March 2016, the FBI filed a lawsuit alleging it could not access Farook’s phone without Apple’s assistance. But that claim was assailed by tech experts and even members of Congress who charged that the FBI’s extensive technical capabilities would surely have some method to unlock an iPhone.
“How the hell you can’t access a phone, I just find baffling,” Rep. Trey Gowdy, South Carolina Republican, said to Mr. Comey during the former FBI director’s testimony before Congress.
But Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz found Apple’s advanced security features made it impossible for FBI agents to use known techniques to unlock the phone without risking the permanent destruction of critical data.
“We found that, at the time then-Director Comey testified on February 9 and March 1, the FBI was not in possession of any means to access the data on the Farook iPhone and believed assistance from Apple would be required to accomplish this” Mr. Horowitz wrote.
Ultimately, the FBI found a way to unlock the phone without Apple’s assistance.
Mr. Horowitz did conclude that improved communication between the FBI’s Remote Operations Unit and its Operational Technology Division would have prevented the need for the Apple lawsuit. The report found that the ROU had a relationship with a third party that had the technology to unlock the iPhone, but it did not notify bureau leadership until after Mr. Comey’s testimony.
The FBI said it is reorganizing its technology division to improve coordination and communication, according to the report.
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