14 DAY TRIAL // Apple probably never expected this to happen, but more and more iPhones are being hacked by authorities in the United States as part of criminal investigations and without any help from the company itself.
This time, the Los Angeles police managed to break into the iPhone owned by the murdered wife of actor Michael Jace, who’s played the role of Detective Julien Lowe in The Shield American TV Series.
As PhoneArena notes, the LAPD has been investigating the case since May 19, 2014, when Jace’s wife, April, was murdered and the police officers discovered her iPhone. Michal Jace himself was arrested and charged for murder, with investigators trying since then to break into the iPhone in an attempt to find more evidence and solve the case.
But hacking the phone wasn’t possible until recently when the LAPD got in touch with third-party experts who bypassed the passcode of the iPhone 5s and extracted what was stored in its memory. There’s no information regarding any evidence that might have been found on the iPhone.
San Bernardino and Apple’s struggle
Apple’s fight against the US government started in late 2015, shortly after the San Bernardino shooting when police investigators discovered that one of the terrorists was using an iPhone.
The FBI requested Apple to hack the device in order to support the investigation, but the company refused to do it on claims of privacy and national security, explaining that creating a backdoor for its own devices would only expose Americans and create additional threats.
The FBI eventually managed to hack the iPhone with help from an unnamed group of hackers who reportedly held an undisclosed vulnerability in iOS. Shortly after that, the FBI issued more hacking requests to Apple involving iPhones used in various criminal activities across the States.
Apple has until now refused to help the FBI in every single case, but at the same time, police officers managed to hack every single iPhone even without the company’s help. In all cases, however, the hacked devices were older iPhones, such as 5s and 5c.