FBI ends case against Apple after cracking gunman's iPhone in San Bernardino terror attack

Federal prosecutors on Monday aounced that the Justice Department, with the help of a mystery third party, successfully accessed the data from the work-issued iPhone of Syed Rizwan Farook, the gunman in the San Beardino terrorist attack.

In a status report filed in U.S. District Court in Riverside, Eileen Decker, U.S. Attoey for the Central District of Califoia, requested U.S. Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym vacate her Feb. 16 order compelling Apple Inc. to build software that would enable the FBI to access the phone’s data.

“The govement has now successfully accessed the data stored on Farook’s iPhone and therefore no longer requires the assistance,” Decker said in the status report.

Monday’s aouncement ended a six-week legal battle between the feds and Apple over whether the govement was overstepping its bounds by forcing the tech giant to build what it claimed was a “backdoor” into the iPhone in question, issued to Farook by his employer, the San Beardino County Department of Public Health.

The battle between the govement and Apple pitted customer digital privacy rights over the interests of law enforcement and national security, and could have been a precedent-setting case that Apple CEO Tim Cook vowed to fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court if necessary. A plethora of digital privacy and civil rights organizations including the ACLU came out in support of Apple, as did some of the world’s biggest tech companies, including Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter and Reddit.

Representatives at Apple could not immediately be reached for comment.

“Our decision to conclude the litigation was based solely on the fact that, with the recent assistance of a third party, we are now able to unlock that iPhone without compromising any information on the phone,” Decker said in a written statement Monday. “Although this step in the investigation is now complete, we will continue to explore every lead, and seek any appropriate legal process, to ensure our investigation collects all of the evidence related to this terrorist attack. The San Beardino victims deserve nothing less.”

• Read More: How the Apple vs. FBI case has played out

On March 21, the day before a highly-anticipated motion hearing in which federal prosecutors and lawyers for Apple were expected to present arguments before Judge Pym, the Justice Department requested to postpone the hearing because the govement had found a third party that may be able to access the iPhone 5C without Apple’s help.

The govement will neither confirm nor deny whether the third party assisting it is Cellebrite, an Israeli tech company that has contracted worked with the FBI numerous times, according to the Federal Procurement Data System, which shows the company entered into a contract with the FBI for more than $15,000 on March 21 — the day the Justice Department requested the March 22 motion hearing be postponed indefinitely.

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It was not immediately clear if any of the data on the phone is germane to the criminal investigation.

“The FBI is currently reviewing the information on the phone, consistent with standard investigatory procedures,” Justice Department spokeswoman Melanie Newman said in a statement. “It remains a priority for the govement to ensure that law enforcement can obtain crucial digital information to protect national security and public safety, either with cooperation from relevant parties, or through the court system when cooperation fails.”

Farook, 28, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, 29, stormed the Inland Regional Center in San Beardino Dec. 2. Armed with assault rifles and clad in tactical gear, the Redlands couple fatally shot 14 people and wounded 22 others before dying in a shootout with police hours later.

Most of those killed and wounded in the attack were Farook’s colleagues from the county’s environmental health services division, who were attending a training seminar in a rented conference room at the center.

The FBI concluded Farook and Malik were radicalized Muslims who had been plaing a mass casualty attack, and declared the Dec. 2 mass shooting the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11.

The latest developments in the case left some relieved that the Justice Department was able to stave off a potential lengthy court battle, but left others skeptical of the govement’s intentions.

Stephen G. Larson, an Upland defense attoey and former federal judge who filed a friend of the court brief in support of the govement on behalf of some of the victims of the shooting or their surviving family members, said he informed the victims and surviving family members Monday of the latest developments in the case.

“We are very pleased with the development. It would not have been in the interest of either the victims nor law enfocement for this to be dragged out through a prolonged court battle,” Larson said. “My hope now is that Congress acts to provide guidance to the courts going forward and addresses this important area of evolving technology.”

Evan Greer, campaign manager for the nonprofit Inteet advocacy organization Fight for the Future, said in an e-mail Monday his organization believes “the govement is backing down due to the public outcry, after intentionally misleading the court and the public in pursuit of a dangerous precedent.”

“The FBI’s credibility just hit a new low,” Greer said in a statement. “They repeatedly lied to the court and the public in pursuit of a dangerous precedent that would have made us all less safe.”

FBI Director James Comey fired back last week at allegations the govement lied about its inability to access Farook’s iPhone, saying “we tried everything that we could think of, asked everybody we thought might be able to help — inside and outside of the govement — before bringing the litigation in San Beardino.”

Apple contested Judge Pym’s Feb. 16 order, arguing that the govement’s use of an 18th Century edict called the All Writs Act, which gives the court the the authority to order a third party to provide nonburdensome technical assistance to law enforcement, was not applicable in this case given the labor-intensive work involved in creating the requested software. Apple also argued that creating such technologu equated to a backdoor that would expose hundreds of millions of Apple customers to the danger of having their data breached by hackers.

Historically, the govement has cited the All Writs Act in court filings nationwide in order to get federal judges to sign off on search warrants.

San Beardino Police Chief Jarrod Burguan called the latest news “a positive development in the case.” He said Monday that the FBI was able to access Farook’s iPhone data some time over the weekend.

“I understand they’ve downloaded the data from it and they’re going through it,” Burguan said. “As I’ve stated before, we’re not going to leave any stoned untued in this, and this is part of that process.”