FBI Discovers al Qaeda Ties in Pensacola Shooter's iPhones -- 4th Update
19 May 2020 - 3:15AM
Dow Jones News
By Sadie Gurman and Dustin Volz
A Saudi aviation student who killed three people on a Florida
Navy base last year had extensive ties to al Qaeda, details that
investigators were able to learn by accessing the gunman's iPhones
after months of delays, top U.S. law-enforcement officials said
Monday, accusing Apple Inc. of providing virtually no help in the
investigation.
The gunman, Second Lt. Mohammed Alshamrani, had been
communicating with a number of operatives of al Qaeda in the
Arabian Peninsula for years, even before he began training with the
U.S. military, officials said, a discovery that was made based on
information recovered from his two locked iPhones.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has long been seen as one of
the terrorist group's most active and dangerous affiliates.
"We received effectively no help from Apple" to access the
phones, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Chistopher Wray
said, delaying the probe and potentially jeopardizing public
safety.
The FBI, bypassing Apple's security features, was ultimately
able to access information on both phones belonging to the gunman,
but there is no guarantee that law enforcement could do that in a
future case, Attorney General William Barr said.
The remarks were the government's strongest yet against Apple's
stance on encryption, and escalated pressure on the company to
provide law enforcement access to its technology and on Congress to
consider legislation that could mandate technology companies to do
so.
"The truth is that we needed some luck here in addition to the
ingenuity to get into the phones this time," Mr. Barr said.
"There's no guarantee that we can be successful in the future or
avoid massive delays, in this case, for months."
Apple didn't immediately respond to a request for comment, but
has previously said that it cooperated extensively and immediately
with the FBI to obtain available information about Alshamrani after
the December attack, including iCloud backup data and account and
transactional information.
The company and other major Silicon Valley firms, including
Facebook, have said for years that undermining their security
protocols would make all of their users vulnerable to malicious
cyber activity, a view shared by most independent experts.
Messrs. Barr and Wray didn't provide precise specifics about how
they were unable to unlock the phones.
Alshamrani posted anti-U.S. messages on social media about two
hours before he opened fire in a classroom at Naval Air Station
Pensacola on Dec. 6, killing three and wounding eight more before
he was fatally shot, officials have said.
"The evidence we've been able to develop from the killer's
devices shows that the Pensacola attack was actually the brutal
culmination of years of planning and preparation by a long time [al
Qaeda] associate," Mr. Wray said, noting that his radicalization
dated back to as early 2015.
The gunman described a desire to learn about flying years ago,
about the same time he talked about attending the Saudi Air Force
Academy in order to carry out what he described as a "special
operation," Mr. Wray said.
Alshamrani wrote a final will purporting to explain himself and
saved it in his phone, Mr. Wray said. Al Qaeda released the will
two months later, claiming responsibility for the attack.
Investigators secured a court order for information from the
gunman's devices within a day of the shooting but remained unable
to get into his encrypted phones.
"The delay from getting into these devices didn't just divert
our personnel from other important work, it also seriously hampered
this investigation," Mr. Wray said Monday. "Finally getting our
hands on the evidence [the gunman] tried to keep from us, is great,
but we really needed it months ago back in December, when the court
issued its warrants."
Write to Sadie Gurman at sadie.gurman@wsj.com and Dustin Volz at
dustin.volz@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 18, 2020 13:00 ET (17:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL)
Historical Stock Chart
From Mar 2024 to Apr 2024
Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL)
Historical Stock Chart
From Apr 2023 to Apr 2024