14 DAY TRIAL // Three news corporation filed a lawsuit against the FBI, asking the judge to force the bureau to reveal how much it cost to unlock the iPhone used by Syed Rizwan Farook in the San Bernardino shootings in December 2015.
Associated Press, Vice Media, and Gannett, which filed the lawsuit in late 2015, said there is no reason for the FBI not to disclose this information, explaining that such details do not compromise national security in any way.
The news organization point to the Freedom of Information Act to convince the court to rule in their favor, explaining that the identity of the party that broke into the iPhone and the cost of the process should be information available to the public.
“While it is undisputed that the vendor developed the iPhone access tool, the government has identified no rational reason why knowing the vendor's identity is linked in any way to the substance of the tool, much less how such knowledge would reveal any information about the tool's application,” the lawsuit documents read according to the BBC.
“Release of this information goes to the very heart of the Freedom of Information Act's purpose, allowing the public to assess government activity - here, the decision to pay public funds to an outside entity in possession of a tool that can compromise the digital security of millions of Americans.”
The San Bernardino saga
The FBI originally sued Apple in an attempt to force the company into hacking the iPhone itself, but despite a court order, Cupertino refused to do it as it believed it would have compromised the security of all Americans and its customers.
The agency eventually turned to a third party, which was at first believed to be Israeli security firm Cellebrite and then an undisclosed hacking group, to break into the iPhone. The FBI did manage to unlock the device and extract the stored information, but specifics regarding the company or the group that helped them crack the phone and how much it cost were never provided.
People familiar with the matter said the FBI spent more than $1 million on software capable of getting past the iPhone security software, but this price was never confirmed by the bureau itself.