Skip to main content

FBI lawyer: Dispute with Apple was ‘worth the fight’

apple iphone se tops annual customer satisfaction index 004
Jessica Lee Star/Digital Trends
We may never find out what was in the San Bernardino shooter’s iPhone, a phone that caused a little over a month-long legal dispute between Apple and the FBI.

James A. Baker, a lawyer for the FBI, said the agency was putting the data it extracted to use. He wasn’t able to confirm or deny if the data was indeed useful, according to the New York Times.

Recommended Videos

“It was worth the fight to make sure that we have turned over every rock that we can with respect to the investigation,” he reportedly told privacy professionals in the nation’s capital. “We owe it to the victims and the families to make sure that we pursue every logical lead.”

But don’t expect to get the details on what was in Syed Farook’s county-issued iPhone, as Baker said the content would only be made public “if and when it becomes appropriate to disclose it.”

Apple’s hope to learn the technique the FBI used to hack the iPhone may also never see the light of day, as Baker confirmed the FBI hasn’t shared the method with the Cupertino company yet. The agency paid a third party — likely Israeli firm Cellebrite — to demonstrate a technique to hack into the iPhone.

The bureau has since been sharing the technique with various law enforcement offices around the country, to help break into more iPhones locked in criminal investigations. Apple is hoping to learn about this technique through legal discovery in a similar, but unrelated, New York case.

In the New York action, an individual pleaded guilty on charges of meth trafficking. Law enforcement hoped that his phone could offer more information for the investigation, and obtained a court order requiring Apple to create a backdoor into the iPhone so they could access it. Apple resisted the order for the same reasons it did in the San Bernardino case, citing the work as “burdensome” but also as an infringement of its customer’s privacy. Apple believes creating such access could threaten online security and individual privacy.

Julian Chokkattu
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Julian is the mobile and wearables editor at Digital Trends, covering smartphones, fitness trackers, smartwatches, and more…
Chromecast vs. Apple AirPlay 2
Woman with her phone using her Chromecast on her TV.

Google and Apple have two very similar services for beaming media from your mobile device over to your TV for a shared experience. Google uses Chromecast with its Google Cast streaming technology, and Apple uses AirPlay 2 to do the same.

So, if you like switching content from your phone to your TV whenever you want, you’ve got a choice to make -- and we’re here to make that choice easier. Let’s take a look at the ins and outs of Chromecast and AirPlay 2, and which may be a better fit for you.

Read more
Apple sold a whopping $48 billion worth of iPhones in just three months
iPhone 12 range

Seems like a lot of folks were holding out for the iPhone 12, with its all-new design, improved display, and 5G capability, among other features.

Apple has just reported record revenue for a non-holiday quarter, coming in at a colossal $89.6 billion for the three months ending March 27, 2021, and marking a year-on-year increase of 54%. A whopping $47.9 billion of that came from iPhone sales, which included not only the iPhone 12 but also the iPhone 11, XR, and SE2. That's up from $29 billion for the same period a year earlier.

Read more
Apple’s logo dispute with recipe app takes a turn
apple-logo

Recipe and meal-planning app Prepear hit the headlines earlier this year when Apple went after the five-person startup over the design of its logo.

The tech giant complained that Prepear’s fruit-based logo was too similar to its own, despite one of them featuring an apple and the other a pear. The logo used by Prepear’s parent company, Super Healthy Kids, uses a strawberry, but Apple is fine with that.

Read more