The iPhone could store key info for criminal investigation

May 9, 2016 07:33 GMT  ·  By

FBI hasn’t yet made a decision on whether the hack it owns and which made it possible to break into the San Bernardino iPhone should be shared with other local enforcement agencies or not, but if it the bureau decides to do it, East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney Hillar Moore III hopes he’ll be among the first to get it.

Moore is hoping for the FBI to help them unlock an iPhone owned by Brittney Mills, a 29-year-old woman from Baton Rouge, Louisiana who was shot multiple times in front of her house by an unknown attacker. Mills was eight months pregnant and her baby boy died too only one week after the shooting in late April.

The investigation showed that Mills opened the door to talk to someone she “probably” knew, so the investigators hope that by accessing her phone, more details on the identity of the shooter can be discovered.

According to TheAdvocate, the investigation has shown that the attacker wanted to use Mills’ car, but when she refused, the woman was shot multiple times.

Her iPhone is protected with a password that nobody knows, and although Apple was already contacted in mid-2015 to help with the investigation, the company offered the same answer as it did in all the other cases and refused to hack the device running iOS 8.

Just a matter of time until the FBI hacks it”

Although the family of the victim agreed with the hacking of the phone, nobody could do it until now, so now the District Attorney hopes that the FBI would step in and help unlock it with the solution that was used on the San Bernardino iPhone.

“I think I will get it. It’s just a matter of when,” Moore said.

Previously, the District Attorney said he believed that Apple was breaking the law by refusing to unlock the phone.

“I think the way Apple, the way that community has built their operating systems, they’re beyond the law. It is the only way I know that you cannot court-order information. Without us being able to get into the phone itself through a subpoena, we are really at a disadvantage and at a loss to solve crimes,” he was quoted as saying in 2015.

Now that the FBI owns an unlocking method that could be used to unlock this device, Moore is hopeful that the agency would step in and help with the investigation. But just like it happened in the all the other cases when iPhones were believed to store essential information regarding the investigation, there’s no evidence that there’s indeed something worthy on the device.