San Bernardino Shooter's Apple ID Passcode Changed While in Government Possession, Apple Says

ABC News ^ | 2/19/2016 | Jack Date

[rpierce]

The Apple ID passcode for the San Bernardino shooter's iPhone was changed less than 24 hours after authorities took possession of the device, a senior Apple executive said today.

And Apple could have recovered information from the phone had the Apple ID passcode not been changed, Apple said.

If the phone was taken to a location where it recognized the Wi-Fi network, such as the San Bernardino shooters' home, it could have been backed up to the cloud, Apple suggested. ... The auto reset was executed by a county information technology employee, according to a federal official. Federal investigators only found out about the reset after it had occurred and that the county employee acted on his own, not on the orders of federal authorities, the source said.

[meatloaf]

No. Local authorities only.

[Mr. M.J.B.]

Yep.

[Iron Munro]

Inside job to protect the third shooter?

Stranger things have happened.....

[Talisker]

The faster you recover info on a terrorist cell, the better the intel. If you appreciate the value of the 4th amendment to prevent people who have done wrong from hiding information, then you should be in favor of getting intel on the people who KILLED 14 PEOPLE.

That's why its so good that they had the pass code IMMEDIATELY. After all, that's what the county IT guy used to change it - right? So what, exactly, is your point?

[DiogenesLamp]

It's the FBI's responsibility to get the data from the phone, not Apple's.

A Federal Judge has made it Apple's responsibility.

[visualops]

I’ll say. Just bizarre that one would do anything like that. Of course, some people think they are smart, and break things. We had a supposedly competent and qualified mac repair guy brick a xeon processor because he thought he was smarter than he really was.

[goodwithagun]

He/she probably does think it’s clever. Noobs gotta noob.

[X-spurt]

That even smells worse.

[DiogenesLamp]

On a case like this, that phone should have been placed in a sealed evidence bag until the person in charge of the investigation said otherwise.

RF shielded box.

[DoughtyOne]

I haven’t done it in a while.

I believe they send you a link to your eMail addy on file.

You use the link to access the area where you can change the passord.

[Mr. M.J.B.]

But look! One of the tanks has an Amurrican flag.

They are super-patriots (just ask them)!

[SWAMPSNIPER]

Is it THE DOCTRINE OF TRICKLE DOWN INCOMPETENCE again?

[Talisker]

There's no way the government doesn't have people that can hack that phone. No frickin way.

They can break it, they can't hack it. Look up public key cryptography, and as an example, Bitcoin.

[kiryandil]

Ah, there it is:

DHS ordered me to scrub records of Muslims with terror ties
February 5, 2016
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3393425/posts

[jessduntno]

“That’s why its so good that they had the pass code IMMEDIATELY. After all, that’s what the county IT guy used to change it - right? So what, exactly, is your point?”

Stop screwing around, disarm the number of password tries lock so they can super computer crunch the passwords and get after the rag headed sock suckers who killed all those people...time is wasting. Is that clear enough?

[DiogenesLamp]

In other words, the FBI blatantly lied in their court filing to try to cover-up their own incompetence by blaming some IT schlub in the San Berdoo Health Department.

Sure. That makes a lot more sense than the possibility that the County IT guy reset it through the cell phone network.

[Grampa Dave]

This is getting really confusing. I am told Apple could not retrieve this info, now they are telling me they could have if the passcode had not changed. I am keeping an open mind on this, but this just keeps getting stranger.

Apparently, the cloud has now entered the picture.

If the cloud had the data, would not that be like Clintoon's server, the data can be captured/recovered.

[doug from upland]

How do you know the phone had nothing to do with the crime?

[Talisker]

A Federal Judge has made it Apple's responsibility.

A federal judge has given that opinion. Apple is appealing it.

Bummer they can do that, eh?

[rpierce]

Thanks, I did miss that part. Along with all the other possibilities floated by posters, it’s hard (nigh impossible) to figure out what the heck is really going on here. Still, I tend to not blame diabolical evil when simple incompetence or human error is a reasonable explanation. :)