County reports it reset Apple password
Worked ‘cooperatively’ with FBI in effort to get at Farook’s account
Staff and wire reports
SAN BERNARDINO — The iCloud account connected to Syed Rizwan Farook’s Apple iPhone was reset in the hours after the Dec. 2 terrorist attack in San Bernardino, according to a motion filed Friday by federal prosecutors in U.S. District Court in Riverside.
The account was reset by a San Bernardino County employee in an effort to gain access to iCloud information connected 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 government 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.
Senior Apple executives also spoke to some media outlets on the condition of anonymity on Friday, revealing it provided four alternatives to access data from the iPhone but one of the encouraging options was ruled out because the county reset Farook’s iCloud account password, The Los Angeles Times reported.
Tech firms such as Google, Facebook and Twitter and advocacy groups have backed Apple.
On Tuesday, protesters plan to gather at Apple stores in more than 30 cities worldwide, including in San Francisco and Palo Alto, according to Fight for the Future, an advocacy group based in Massachusetts.
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 Los Angeles New Group, The Associated Press and staff writer Queenie Wong contributed to this report.
