Posted on 02/11/2016 6:51:08 AM PST by Iron Munro
FBI Director James Comey said Tuesday one of the phones used by the killers in the San Bernardino, California, attacks remains inaccessible to investigators more than two months after 14 people were fatally shot.
Testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Comey cited the case as an example of how encryption is affecting counterterrorism efforts. But he said the dilemma of bad guys "going dark" is mostly affecting state and local law enforcement officials who are trying to solve murder, drug and car accident cases.
Companies are increasingly making devices such as cellphones with encryption that allows only the people communicating to read the messages.
Comey said it's a big problem when law enforcement armed with a search warrant can't open a phone, even when a judge says there's probable cause to have it opened.
The December 2 shooting left 14 people dead and 22 others wounded.
Investigators were also seeking information about an 18-minute gap in the timeline between the deadly attack at the Inland Regional Center and the shootout in which both attackers, Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, were killed.
The man who bought the rifles used in the attack, Enrique Marquez Jr., has pleaded not guilty to charges in a federal indictment accusing him of conspiring with Farook and to provide material support to terrorists.
The White House has called on the tech industry for help in disrupting the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and other terrorist groups. Investigators say the San Bernardino shooting was inspired by ISIS.
When the govt screws up as they did on 9-11 and San Bernardino they get promotions and more money, instead of being held accountable. They come up with excuses rather than admitting they failed in their most basic responsibility. We give them trillions and they can’t even defend our most basic defense ...our borders. Instead they want to take away our right of privacy and most egregious of all to invite more Trojan Horses into our country.
And from the refuge David Fry was able to get videos and last night’s cell phone call out in spite of the FBI shut down.
Encryption is not the problem.
The problem is uncontrolled immigration. If the San Bernadino ragheads had not been admitted to the U.S. they would not have been able to murder innocent Americans.
What kind of phones did they have?
Right.
Sure we have to give up our privacy, have our conversations recorded, have our emails read, have our daughters and grandmothers felt up at the airport, wait in long security lines to enter public places, have our public actions recorded on video 24/7, have restrictions on our ability to buy weapons, pay taxes to fund a federal Department of Homeland Security, etc....
...but don’t you feel good about yourself living in a multicultural society that welcomes muslims? Isn’t the reward of knowing we are a progressive society worth all of those costs?
Give it to some high school geek. They’ll have it opened in minutes.
Reminds me of a scene in “Live Free or Die Hard”.
The hacker kid says the bad guys are doing a “fire sale” and the FBI tech agent is all “Nope, no way, it can’t be done, it’s impossible.”
Hacker kids response “Please tell me she’s not in charge of anything important!”
They have access and I bet it took all of 5min to crack it.
The reason the FBI made this PRESS RELEASE is to give the knuckleheads the false hope of security.
They’ve got all this hi-tech equipment that a lot of us would love to have—NVG, sound equipment & electronics, especially cutting edge gun gear and tactical queer gear.
But I get the feeling that if the rifle isn’t zeroed or the instrument tuned-in, if some lab geek isn’t holding their hands they’re like zoo chimps taking turns trying to pull a train on a flat beachball.
You know why Jarret pulled the trigger here. Obama the hand puppet, constant golfer & campaigner can’t make a decision outside these two areas, and our political masters have been smarting since Bundy’s ranch after commoners had the effrontery to rebel/keep and bear arms when faced/threatened with actions done for their own good/tyranny.
Once the feds get the ranchers’ lands they will become sanctuaries for critters in perpetuity, no plebs allowed.
I'm guessing this is an iPhone we're talking about. The whole article read like "See what happens when Apple gives us phones we can't crack!"
The FBI likes spinning their wheels or they wouldn’t be doing it. Some political types at the top don’t want to know who the perp was calling.
Give the phone to the NSA and the phone encryption would be cracked.
They didn’t contact NSA—on purpose.
The “War on Terror” is like the “War on Drugs” and the “War on Poverty” and the “War on Cancer”. There are a lot of contractors with influence in DC that want these lucrative “wars” to last forever. They have no interest in ending them.
Could be a lie to get some of the Terrorists contacts out in the open;
on the other hand, even if the NSA could crack the phones, the FBI wouldn't ask them for help.
Yes. Not a reason for a backdoor, but couldn’t they subpoena who wrote the encryption code and get what they want? How would that be any different than issuing a search warrant? How would that be any different than unlocking a security bow or any other physical thing to gain access?
Probably true. How I wish I had one around right about now. As a personally ironic twist, as I was reading this article I got an email on my phone. I went to unlock it to read the message and the damned thing wouldn't take my password.
Now I have to rest it and then set the thing back up. Our corporate Helpdesk says they can remotely wipe it but they have no way to remotely unlock it. Technology....bah!
The Real FBI would have finished this long ago ,but this Obama Fake FBI are clueless
Perhaps the NSA has not deemed it necessary to share with the FBI. Or maybe the FBI is too proud to ask.
For starters Google "PGP ENCRYPTION"
Then Google "LAVABIT ENCRYPTION".
A few years back I used a well known well supported encryption program. The government asked the company to put in a back door. After that a lot of credit cards were compromised on a popular site, the site sued the encryption vendor and they went out of business. I still have my pre-back door copy though.
As I understand it that is what happened to LAVABIT and what drove them out of business.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.