A Worthy $1.3 Billion Hacking by the FBI

On March 29, the FBI announced that it was successful in hacking into the locked iPhone of the San Bernardino gunman Syed Farook. This put a halt on the controversy between Apple and the FBI, with one side arguing that the hacking is required for solving the mystery towards the San Bernardino attack while one side viewed it as siding against its effort to fight terrorism.

The start of this controversy dates back to approximately five weeks ago, when the FBI announced that they found the phone that was used by Syed Farook, a gunman who took part in the terrorist attacks in San Bernardino, California. FBI authorities wanted to look inside the phone to find out communication or information that could be used to get a better idea of the crime. However, the phone was locked and because it was running on the latest software of iOS 9, there was no way the FBI officials could access the phone without knowing the passcode.

Because of this, the FBI asked a judge to force Apple to write a custom software that allows the FBI to gain access to the phone. However, Apple declined the FBI’s request due to the fear that consumer privacy may be attacked and the danger of information being leaked. This raised a controversy between FBI and Apple and the case had to be sent to court to be settled.

With Apple and the FBI in a great conflict, the FBI announced that, in all these contexts, they had successfully hacked into the iPhone that belonged to Syed Farook by paying a total of $1.3million to contract hackers. According to the FBI, the phone was hacked successfully with a completely new hacking method that is, quote, “mysterious”. This hacking ended the controversy between Apple and the FBI, but this was unpleasant news for Apple, since the newest software was hacked with a method of which they have no knowledge.

It was true that Apple paid a total of $1.3million to crack into the iPhone using a mysterious method. Hacking can be considered bad, but in a case like this when it was used to investigate a terrorism-linked shooting, Apple should have provided extensive help rather than to have its software hacked.