San Bernardino County tweets it reset terrorist's iCloud password with FBI

The iCloud account coected to Syed Rizwan Farook’s Apple iPhone was reset in the hours after the Dec. 2 terrorist attack in San Beardino, according to a motion filed Friday by federal prosecutors in US District Court in Riverside.

The account was reset by a San Beardino County employee in an effort to gain access to iCloud information coected to Farook, according to the filing. The iPhone is a county issued phone. Farook was a health inspector for the county.

Late Friday night, the county’s Twitter account, @CountyWire, acknowledged that the password for the iCloud account had been reset.

“The County was working cooperatively with the FBI when it reset the iCloud password at the FBI’s request,” the tweet read.

According to the court filing, technicians with both the FBI and Apple discussed multiple suggestions to gain access.

“Indeed, after reviewing a number of suggestions to obtain the data from the SUBJECT DEVICE with Apple, technicians from both Apple and the FBI agreed that they were unable to identify any other methods — besides that which is now ordered by this Court — that are feasible for gaining access to the currently inaccessible data on the SUBJECT DEVICE,” the document reads.

One of those suggestions “and their deficiencies” as noted in the document, was “to attempt an auto-backup of the SUBJECT DEVICE with the related iCloud account (which would not work in this case because neither the owner nor the govement knew the password to the iCloud account, and the owner, in an attempt to gain access to some information in the hours after the attack, was able to reset the password remotely, but that had the effect of eliminating the possibility of an auto-backup).”

Friday’s filing was in response to Tuesday’s posting of an open letter on Apple’s website, where Apple CEO Tim Cook says the company has done everything “within our power and within the law” to assist the FBI in the investigation.

According to the document, Apple “has consistently complied with a significant number of orders issued pursuant to the All Writs Act to facilitate the execution of search warrants on Apple devices ruing earlier versions of iOS.” The iOS versions referenced are versions 8.0 and earlier.

“The FBI is proposing an unprecedented use of the All Writs Act of 1789 to justify an expansion of its authority,” Cook’s letter states. “If the govement can use the All Writs Act to make it easier to unlock your iPhone, it would have the power to reach into anyone’s device to capture their data.”

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Farook, 28, and his wife Tashfeen Malik, 29, opened fire at a training seminar in an Inland Regional Center conference room Dec. 2 killing 14 people and wounding 22 more. The two were armed with assault rifles when they shot at the crowd of about 70 people, most of which were county employees. The FBI declared the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11.

The Redlands couple was killed in a shootout with police hours after the IRC attack.

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