Tag Archives: comey

The FBI Spent More Than $1 Million to Hack One Potentially Useless Phone

by ToniCBOYqghsh Posted on April 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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It turns out the FBI’s 11-hour solution to its huge public fight with Apple didn’t come cheap.

FBI director James Comey said on Thursday that the agency paid more than $1 million to unnamed private-sector hackers for help in unlocking the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters. The FBI first attempted to make Apple write software that would allow law enforcement to unlock the phone quickly, but the company refused and said the request could unconstitutionally expand government authority. The case sparked an uproar over digital privacy as well as a major court battle, which stopped only when the FBI announced it had received the hackers’ help and withdrew its order to Apple.

Comey, speaking at the Aspen Security Forum, didn’t give a specific price for the hack, but said it cost the agency more than he would make in the next seven years of his term as director. The FBI director makes at least $181,500 a year by law, putting the cost of the hack at a minimum of $1.27 million, by Comey’s estimate. An FBI press officer could not confirm the accuracy of Comey’s estimate or provide a specific cost.

“It was worth it,” Comey told the audience in Aspen. But it’s not clear how much value the hacking method or the phone actually has. Comey has repeatedly said that the method used to break into the phone would work only on an iPhone 5C running iOS 9, like the San Bernardino phone, and that Apple could discover and fix the security flaw that allowed the hack to work. And on Tuesday, CNN reported that the phone “didn’t contain evidence of contacts with other ISIS supporters or the use of encrypted communications during the period the FBI was concerned about.” The FBI argues the lack of information is valuable evidence in and of itself.

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The FBI Spent More Than $1 Million to Hack One Potentially Useless Phone

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The FBI Says Its Fight With Apple Is Just About One Phone. Police and Prosecutors Say Otherwise

by MurrayMeredith Posted on February 22, 2016

Mother Jones

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The war between Apple and the FBI over the iPhone used by Syed Farook, one of the San Bernardino shooters, hinges mostly on one major question: Is the court order telling Apple to help the FBI unlock Farook’s iPhone an isolated case, or is it just the start of a new method for the government to guarantee access to anyone’s device?

Apple, which is fighting the order to unlock Farook’s phone, says complying with it would be just the tip of the iceberg. “The order would set a legal precedent that would expand the powers of the government, and we simply don’t know where that would lead us,” Apple CEO Tim Cook wrote in a letter to customers on Sunday. “Should the government be allowed to order us to create other capabilities for surveillance purposes, such as recording conversations or location tracking?” Privacy groups and most tech experts agree with Cook.

But the FBI insists no such thing will happen, saying it is only seeking access to Farook’s phone and no one else’s. “The San Bernardino litigation isn’t about trying to set a precedent or send any kind of message,” FBI Director James Comey wrote in a post responding to Cook on Lawfare, a prominent national security blog, on Sunday. “We simply want the chance, with a search warrant, to try to guess the terrorist’s passcode without the phone essentially self-destructing and without it taking a decade to guess correctly. That’s it. We don’t want to break anyone’s encryption or set a master key loose on the land.”

Yet high-profile supporters of the FBI’s case have said the precedent is what’s important. Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a prominent advocate for more law enforcement access to encrypted data, wrote in USA Today last week that “the iPhone precedent in San Bernardino is important for our courts and our ability to protect innocent Americans and enforce the rule of law. While the national security implications of this situation are significant, the outcome of this dispute will also have a drastic effect on criminal cases across the country.”

Comey and other law enforcement officials have repeatedly stressed how widespread they believe their encryption problem is. Both terrorists and criminals increasingly use encryption to communicate, they say, meaning the government’s ability to detect them and stop crimes or attacks is getting dramatically worse. And that problem extends well beyond big terrorism cases like San Bernardino and into everyday police work. “I’d say this problem…is actually overwhelmingly affecting law enforcement,” Comey told Burr’s committee last week, “because it affects cops and prosecutors and sheriffs and detectives trying to make murder cases, car accident cases, kidnapping cases, drug cases. It has an impact on our national security work, but overwhelmingly this is a problem that local law enforcement sees.”

Cyrus Vance Jr., the district attorney for the borough of Manhattan in New York City, often highlights how many cases are supposedly impossible to make because suspects use encryption—and said on Sunday he’d put the Apple precedent to more widespread use, forcing companies to help unlock the phones of suspects in the future. “As the encryption debate zeroes in on the cowardly terrorist acts committed in San Bernardino, we should also remember that Apple’s switch to default device encryption affects virtually all criminal investigations, the overwhelming majority of which are handled by state and local law enforcement,” he said last week in calling for Congress to pass a law mandating backdoors. Burr and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, have pledged to introduce such a bill in Congress.

State and local officials around the country back Vance. The Intercept compiled a collection of quotes from local law enforcement officials that run counter to Comey’s claim that the Apple case will provide only one-time access. As Matt Rokus, the deputy chief of the Eau Claire, Wisconsin, police put it, “The Apple case is going to have significant ramifications on us locally.”

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The FBI Says Its Fight With Apple Is Just About One Phone. Police and Prosecutors Say Otherwise

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Strike Two For Pair of New York Times Reporters

by EdmundoGutierre Posted on December 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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Today, FBI director James Comey said that the San Bernardino shooters never talked openly about violent jihadism on social media: “So far, in this investigation we have found no evidence of posting on social media by either of them at that period in time and thereafter reflecting their commitment to jihad or to martyrdom. I’ve seen some reporting on that, and that’s a garble.”

So where did this notion come from, anyway? The answer is a New York Times story on Sunday headlined “U.S. Visa Process Missed San Bernardino Wife’s Zealotry on Social Media.” It told us that Tashfeen Malik “talked openly” on social media about jihad and that, “Had the authorities found the posts years ago, they might have kept her out of the country.” The story was written by Matt Apuzzo, Michael Schmidt, and Julia Preston.

Do those names sound familiar? They should. The first two were also the authors of July’s epic fail claiming that Hillary Clinton was the target of a criminal probe over the mishandling of classified information in her private email system. In the end, virtually everything about the story turned out to be wrong. Clinton was not a target. The referral was not criminal. The emails in question had not been classified at the time Clinton saw them.

Assuming Comey is telling the truth, that’s two strikes. Schmidt and Apuzzo either have some bad sources somewhere, or else they have one really bad source somewhere. And coincidentally or not, their source(s) have provided them with two dramatic but untrue scoops that make prominent Democrats look either corrupt or incompetent. For the time being, Schmidt and Apuzzo should be considered on probation. That’s at least one big mistake too many.

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Strike Two For Pair of New York Times Reporters

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FBI: Background Check Failure Allowed Dylann Roof to Get His Gun

by KendricI79 Posted on July 10, 2015

Mother Jones

In a statement on Friday, the FBI said a background check flaw allowed Dylann Roof, the suspected gunman behind last month’s fatal shooting in Charleston, to purchase the gun that killed nine people inside a historic black church. From the Times:

A loophole in the check system cleared the man, Dylann Roof, to buy the .45-caliber handgun despite his having previously admitted to drug possession, the bureau said. Those conducting the background check did not have access to that police report.

“We are all sick this happened,” said the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey. “We wish we could turn back time.”

Speaking to reporters about the loophole, Comey said Roof had admitted to previous drug possession charges, but the background check flaw failed to alert authorities and thereby prevent Roof from obtaining a weapon. According to NBC News, “unlawful users” of controlled substances are prohibited from buying a gun.

The vast majority of mass shooters over the last three decades have obtained their weapons legally, according to a Mother Jones data investigation.

Following the massacre on July 17, President Obama expressed his continuing frustration with Congress’ inaction on gun control, reminding reporters, “This kind of mass violence does not happen in other advanced countries.”

Earlier this week, Roof was indicted on nine counts of murder, one count of weapons possession, and three counts of attempted murder.

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FBI: Background Check Failure Allowed Dylann Roof to Get His Gun

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FBI Director Delivers Powerful Call for Change in Police Race Relations

by JamisonAnthony Posted on February 12, 2015

Mother Jones

In a rare and candid speech on Thursday, FBI director James Comey urged police officers to begin engaging in honest conversations about broken race relations in America, saying it was time for officers to stop resorting to “lazy mental shortcuts” that have too often lead to the mistreatment of minorities.

“Those of us in law enforcement must re-double our efforts to resist bias and prejudice,” Comey said in an address to Georgetown University. “We must better understand the people we serve and protect—by trying to know, deep in our gut, what it feels like to be a law-abiding young black man walking on the street and encountering law enforcement. We must understand how that young man may see us.”

The speech follows the high-profile police killings of two unarmed black men, Michael Brown and Eric Garner, and the widespread anger expressed over the lack of grand jury indictments against the officers in both deaths. The fatal shootings sparked massive protests across the country, with demonstrators demanding for police reform.

On Thursday, Comey referred to both Brown and Garner, along with the two NYPD officers who were shot execution-style in their patrol car in December. Calling their deaths a “crossroads,” Comey said it was time for law enforcement agencies to acknowledge that a large portion of police history “is not pretty” and rife with instances of persisting, unconscious prejudices.

Comey’s rationale aligns with psychological studies indicating that even in the absence of overt racist views, individuals–particularly police officers–often act with bias, especially in instance where a split-second decision is required.

“If we can’t help our latent biases, we can help our behavior in response to those instinctive reactions, which is why we work to design systems and processes that overcome that very human part of us all,” he said. “Although the research may be unsettling, what we do next is what matters most.”

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FBI Director Delivers Powerful Call for Change in Police Race Relations

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Richmond, Calif., fights back against Chevron’s choke hold

by ghd12australia Posted on January 3, 2013

Richmond, Calif., fights back against Chevron’s choke hold

By Susie Cagle

Chevron has dominated the town of Richmond, Calif., for 110 years, but that dominance is finally being called into question. Tensions have been escalating for decades, but came to a head after a fire in August 2012 at the oil giant’s Richmond refinery belched toxic smoke all over the Bay Area.

When Chevron sought city permits to rebuild the refinery, the Richmond mayor and City Council called for stronger pollution and safety controls. But in December, the city Planning Department approved permits that will allow the company to bring the refinery back to full production with only very minor improvements in emissions.

Last month, Chevron agreed to pay $145,600 to settle 28 different air-quality violations that had taken place at the refinery before the fire. That works out to $5,200 for each screwup, which ranged from not filing reports on hydrogen sulfide and sulfur dioxide pollution incidents to the fact that the the oil giant didn’t check part of the refinery for leaks for two years.

For most of its 110 years in Richmond, Chevron — the town’s biggest employer and a big donor to local political campaigns — has put out fires and paid fines and not looked back, while local residents suffered from sustained health problems. Now, The New York Times reports, the winds are shifting:

“They went through a period of time when they took a very hard-line, confrontational position with the City of Richmond, and I don’t think it was working for them very well,” said Tom Butt, a councilman who has been critical of Chevron and who won re-election in November, despite the oil company’s support for three other candidates. “They were facing a situation where the majority of the City Council were not their friends, and so they decided to try a different position.”

Sean Comey, a Chevron spokesman, said the company felt the need to adopt a new strategy toward Richmond, though he did not go as far as to acknowledge that it was a direct response to the city’s changing politics.

“Probably about four, five years ago, we sat down to really reassess what the state of our relationship was with the community where we had been for more than 100 years — and it wasn’t where we wanted it to be,” Mr. Comey said.

So Chevron built some community gardens and threw some holiday parties and tried to appear really excited about civic goings-on.

“Richmond kind of gets into your blood,” said Andrea Bailey, Chevron’s manager of community engagement in Richmond. “There’s so much going on, and there’s this precipice of greatness. It’s exciting.”

And then the company was like, “But they still hate us? Whyyyy?”

Maybe because Chevron is also trying to buy the city council. In last year’s race, it spent $1.2 million and succeeded in getting two of its three preferred candidates elected.

Still, Chevron says its polling shows “favorability with over 50 percent of residents,” even after August’s fire. I wonder if Chevron is also following the #FuckChevron hashtag that’s become popular on Twitter with Bay Area residents. Best get the community engagement manager on top of that one.

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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Richmond, Calif., fights back against Chevron’s choke hold

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