On the morning of December 6th, 2019, a mass shooting took place at Naval Air Station Pensacola in Florida. Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani was responsible for carrying out a mass shooting that took the life of three people and injured eight more. He was taken down by Escambia County sheriff deputies, but the FBI is treating this case as presumed terrorism, so they’re still investigating the motives behind the attack. The shooter had two iPhones, and now, the FBI could’ve asked Apple to help unlock these devices.

According to a report, the FBI needs Apple to unlock passcode-protected iPhones that belonged to the shooter. Apple said that they have already provided all the data in its possession to the FBI:

We have the greatest respect for law enforcement and have always worked cooperatively to help in their investigations. When the FBI requested information from us relating to this case a month ago, we gave them all of the data in our possession, and we will continue to support them with the data we have available.

This means that Apple has provided all the information that they’ve stored in iCloud, but they refuse to unlock the iPhones. It isn’t the first time this happens. Apple already refused in 2016 to do this or to develop a custom version of iOS that would enable the FBI to guess the devices passcode without initiating a system wipe after ten failed attempts. At that moment, the FBI wanted Apple’s help to unlock an iPhone 5c, which belonged to one of the terrorists involved in a 2015 attack in San Bernardino. Apple says that by doing this, they would create several privacy and security concerns. However, the FBI still managed to access the device via a third party solution back then, and they will probably have to do that again.

Source MacRumors

Via NBC News