Ex-DHS Officials: San Bernardino Phone unlikely to hold important info

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That’s because they already have access to a teeming trail of digital breadcrumbs that the terror suspect inevitably left behind before he and his wife killed 14 people in the Dec. 2 shooting rampage in San Bernardino, California, according to experts familiar with the technology involved. Those include data about the websites he visited using the county-issued work phone, calls he made, apps he downloaded and the people with whom he exchanged text messages — possibly including the content of some messages, up to about a week before the attacks.

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Experts say it’s nearly impossible for Farook not to have left digital traces up to the minute he died in a gun battle with police — data obtainable from sources such as Verizon’s cellular network, the advertising program of Verizon’s AOL subsidiary and even Apple itself.

That includes any phone numbers that Farook contacted if he made a regular voice call in the past year or longer. If he exchanged SMS text messages, the FBI most likely knows not just whom he sent them to, but the messages’ contents going back about a week before the shooting. Apple can disclose which apps he downloaded — including any encrypted text messaging apps. And Apple can probably identify whoever used the phone’s default iMessage text client to exchange messages with Farook, although not the content of those messages.

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So why are Justice Department prosecutors waging such a loud, public court fight to demand that Apple help it unlock the encrypted phone’s security protections — a fight that has alarmed the tech industry, stoked the debate about privacy versus national security, and even intruded into the presidential race?

The FBI is “hoping to set a precedent,” the ex-DHS official told POLITICO. And it chose its ground well: a terrorism case, where “the public opinion aspect is stronger.”

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"There is a reasonably good chance that there is nothing of any value on the phone," San Bernardino city police Chief Jarrod Burguantold NPR on Friday, although he defended the FBI’s request as “an effort to leave no stone unturned.”

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