NSA Didn’t Crack The San Bernardino iPhone – Here’s Why

NSA Didn’t Crack The San Bernardino iPhone – Here’s Why

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Is there anything the US National Security Agency can’t do? It can tap undersea fibre optic cables in real time, track the locations of millions of mobile phones each day, and analyse and process a huge chunk of internet traffic – emails, browsing, the lot – but not crack one measly iPhone 5c.

The Intercept reports that in a recent conference, NSA deputy director Richard Ledgett admitted that the FBI approached the agency for assistance in the San Bernardino case, but the agency was unable to divert resources to it. The NSA, he said, has to prioritise its resource with utilitarian considerations, and will focus on cracking those devices commonly used by suspected criminals, rather than those popular among the general population.

“If we don’t have a bad guy who’s using it, we don’t do that,” said Ledgett.

The NSA was conspicuously missing from the scene when a judicial battle erupted between the FBI and Apple, with the Bureau demanding the tech giant help it unlock an iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino terrorists. Apple claimed it couldn’t crack the encryption on the device and refused to cooperate with the FBI.

FBI director James Comey said at the time that his colleagues at the NSA were unsuccessful in their attempts. Turns out, they were simply not that eager to help.

A few weeks after the saga erupted, the FBI dropped its case against apple the day before a court hearing, because “an outside party demonstrated to the FBI a possible method” of unlocking the device. Comey later admitted that the Bureau paid more than $1m for the hack.