14 DAY TRIAL // Apple has often been criticized for not helping the FBI and other police break into locked devices to extract data supposed to help during investigations, but it turns out that the company does work with the feds on teaching them how to deal with information stored on its phones and laptops.
A report published by Forbes and citing John Bennett, the head of San Francisco’s FBI division, reveals that Apple is teaching the bureau’s experts to extra data from iPhone, Mac, and iCloud accounts.
Cupertino, however, doesn’t provide any kind of guidance as to how to break the encryption of its devices or hack them, but instead does alert FBI’s experts when new updates for iOS and macOS could bring changes that might impact the current state of an investigation.
“They’ve offered training for Mac forensics and they do that for a lot of law enforcement. We just happen to be in their backyard, so it’s a little easier for when they want to do a class,” Bennett said. “We schedule something, they come to the facility and we bring people in from around the country to work with them. They offer those forensic training classes, not only to the FBI but to local departments too.”
The San Bernardino saga
Apple hasn’t acknowledged the collaboration with the FBI, but Bennet explained that forensic specialists often meet with Apple experts to discuss matters like data collection from iDevices.
“We have a great relationship with them [Apple] from a local field perspective and also from understanding products and what they do from an engineering standpoint, which [goes back] to Quantico,” the FBI official was quoted as saying by the cited source.
“From our experience in San Francisco, we have meetings with Apple and they are not only a great company but they're also victims. Their stuff gets hit and their employees get in harm's way, so they call us locally on a lot of things they need help for.”
The most famous dispute between Apple and the FBI over the unlocking of devices took place in 2015 when the company was asked to help break into a phone used by the San Bernardino terrorists.
Apple refused to do it claiming that it doesn’t have a hacking solution and developing one would compromise the security of all its customers, with the FBI eventually turning to a third-party group of hackers that was reportedly paid $1 million to extract data from the phone.