It was the FBI vs. the media.
The FBI was declared the winner by a U.S. District Judge.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation can keep details of its iPhone hacking tool secret, including which vendor made it and how much the federal government paid for it.
This is related to a previous mass shooting in the U.S., in this case, when Syed Rizwan shot and killed fourteen people during an attack on the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California.
The shooter had an iPhone and had turned on the feature to erase all data on the phone after ten failed passcode attempts.
That lead the FBI to take legal action against Apple to gain access to the iPhone. The agency dropped that effort when it announced it had purchased an iPhone hacking tool from an un-named vendor.
Media outlets sue FBI to release information in iPhone hack
The Associated Press, USA Today, and Vice Media, LLC asked the court to reveal two things under the Freedom of Information Act:
- The identity of the vendor that created the iPhone hacking tool
- The price the FBI paid for the iPhone hacking tool
Court says iPhone hacking creator to remain secret
U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutka denied the media request for iPhone hacking information and sided with the FBI in her memorandum opinion in the iPhone hacking tool case.
She agreed with the intelligence agency, that revealing vendor information, could lead to a cyber-attack on the company and potentially expose details about how the tool might work:
"Since the vendor is not as well equipped to guard against these types of attacks as is the FBI, revealing the vendor’s identity 'risks disclosure, exploitation, and circumvention of a classified intelligence source and method'.”
"If an adversary were determined to learn more information about the iPhone hacking tool the FBI acquired, it is certainly logical that the release of the name of the company that created the tool could provide insight into the tool’s technological design. Adversaries could use this information to enhance their own encryption technologies to better guard against this tool or tools the vendor develops for the FBI in the future."
Court says price FBI paid for iPhone hacking tool to stay secret
The media outlets asked that the FBI be forced to say how much it paid for the iPhone hacking tool. But the judge agreed with the FBI that even that piece of information could provide too much insight:
“Minor details of intelligence information,” like the price paid for the iPhone hacking tool, “may reveal more information than their apparent insignificance suggests because, much like a piece of jigsaw puzzle, each detail may aid in piecing together other bits of information.” Leopold v. CIA, 106 F. Supp. 3d 51, 59 (D.D.C. 2015)"
Media outlets argued that former FBI Director James Comey's statements on the general price range of the tool meant the Government had already opened the door to learning the actual price. But the court disagreed.
The judge acknowledged that any affidavit that describes a threatened harm to national security is always speculative to some extent. And in this case, the FBI met its burden of proof to keep iPhone hacking tool details a secret. The cost of revealing the information is too high:
"The FBI considers the iPhone hacking tool itself to be an intelligence source and method, (Second Hardy Decl. ¶ 8), and the court agrees. The tool allows the FBI to access intelligence information on suspects’ phones, therefore logically serving as both a source of intelligence information and method for obtaining intelligence information."
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