Three news organizations in the United States have decided to sue the Federal Bureau of Investigation because the agency did not share how it hacked into the San Bernardino iPhone that belonged to shooter Syed Farook.
The Associated Press, Vice Media, and Gannett, the parent company of USA Today, said in a lawsuit that the FBI has no right to withhold the information on how it cracked the code of the San Bernardino iPhone.
The complainants believe the public has a right to know what happened and how it was done.
The suit is filed under the Freedom of Information Act, and the group is asking the court to force the FBI to release all information on the hack.
Earlier this year, the FBI and Apple faced off in court because of the company's refusal to hack into the San Bernardino iPhone despite the request of the agency. However, the court battle was short lived because the FBI managed to purchase the hack from a third party.
Several tech companies supported Apple in its battle with the FBI, which raises the question of whether the agency would have come out as the victor.
No one knows who the third party even is, so the news organizations filed the suit under the Freedom of Information Act.
Gannett believes there needs to be transparency.
The FBI also only said it paid more than $1 million for the technique to open the iPhone. However, the agency did not reveal the exact figure.
Despite the FBI managing to gain access to the Apple iPhone, it did not find anything useful that could aid it in the investigation.
There is also doubt as to whether the courts would compel the FBI to reveal how it hacked into the San Bernardino iPhone. Individuals — especially those with evil intentions — could use the procedure to pull off the same trick on other phones even before Apple gets the slightest chance of creating and releasing a fix.
At the end of the day, though, it would appear as if the FBI had shared its technique with the LAPD, because they too managed to unlock an iPhone, this time, an iPhone 5s.
These hacks by law enforcers and investigators might not end any time soon — and investigative journalists might be hard pressed to get under the hood via the FOI, and learn the details of the officials' hacking techniques in the name of transparency.
Apple would then just have to resolve this debate on privacy internally and come up with another layer of security that can break the hold the FBI now has over its iPhones.
