The US Justice Department moved to cancel a hearing on Tuesday over whether Apple should be forced to help investigators break into an iPhone used by a gunman in last year’s San Bernardino, California, mass shooting. In a new filing on Monday, the Justice Department said it might no longer need Apple’s assistance to extract data from the phone used in the attack.
“On Sunday, March 20, 2016, an outside party demonstrated to the FBI a possible method for unlocking Farook’s iPhone,” Justice Department lawyers wrote in the filing, referring to Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the San Bernardino gunmen.
“Testing is required to determine whether it is a viable method that will not compromise data on Farook’s iPhone. If the method is viable, it should eliminate the need for the assistance from Apple.”
The Justice Department requested the court cancel the hearing scheduled for Tuesday and said it would file a status report by April 5th on its progress on unlocking the iPhone.
Digital data
The Justice Department’s move may help sidestep a clash that has erupted between the US government and Apple over the iPhone and how and when authorities should use the troves of digital data collected and stored by tech companies. The two sides have traded blows over the issue for weeks, ever since Apple received a court order last month requesting that the company comply with an order to weaken the security of the iPhone so law enforcement could gain access to the data in it.
Judge Sheri Pym, the federal magistrate judge in the US district court for the Central District of California who is set to hold the hearing on Tuesday, scheduled a call with both Apple and federal prosecutors on Monday afternoon to discuss the government’s latest move.
– (New York Times service)