The Federal Bureau of Investigation wants to get into the Minnesota Mall stabber´s iPhone, as announced by special agent Rick Thorton at a press conference in St. Cloud. He explained that the phone is locked with a passcode.
Dahir Adan, a 20-year-old man, stabbed ten people after asking them if they were Muslim. He was eventually shot by security forces. The fundamentalist terrorist organization ISIS claimed credit for the attack, explaining that this was their seventh strike against Western targets in the last 60 days, following other terrorist strikes in France, Canada, Belgium and Gerrmany.
According to Wired, FBI Agent Thornton said in Thursday's press conference that the bureau had "analyzed more than 780 gigabytes of data from multiple computers and other electronic devices. "We are conducting an extensive review of his social media and other online activity, we continue to review his electronic media and digital footprint," he added.
The San Bernardino iPhone case
This event represents a very delicate situation as the one that FBI dealt with after the San Bernardino shooting, after which they ended up paying $1.3 million to a third party to unlock the assassin´s iPhone, after Apple´s refusal to cooperate, as reported by CNET.
This case became very controversial, since many people believed that this could set a precedent in which U.S. agencies would have the opportunity to break into everyone´s phones without question.
The big difference
The difference with the previous case, is that it's not certain whether the same method could be completely useful in this one, since the newer versions of iOS may have new features that are immune to the technique that the FBI used before. Because of this, Apple might have to face both the U.S. government and the FBI once again. However, one of the main questions is how the people will respond to this situation.
