HackingInformation on hacking tool could be of use to “hostile entities”: FBI

The FBI on Monday said it was right for the agency to withhold documents which detail how it unlocked an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino, California, shooters. The FBI said that the information, if released, could be exploited by “hostile entities.”

The Justice Department, in response to a FOIA law suit by the AP, Vice Media, and Gannett, the parent company of USA Today, earlier this month released heavily redacted records relating to the incident – but withheld information about how much the FBI paid a third party to unlock the work phone of Syed Rizwan Farook.

The Justice Department, in its court filing Monday, justified those redactions, arguing that the information it withheld, if released to the public, could be seized upon by “hostile entities” who could then develop their own “countermeasures,” interfering with and disrupting the FBI’s intelligence gathering. The government also argued that disclosure “would result in severe damage to the FBI’s efforts to detect and apprehend violators of the United States’ national security and criminal laws through these very activities and methods.”

“The withheld information is also very specific in nature, provided during a specific time period, and is known to very few individuals,” Justice Department lawyers said.

Techportal reports that the FBI in its most recent filing broadened the legal arguments it had used earlier this month, when it released about 100 pages of heavily redacted documents, saying for the first time that national security was at risk and that the records were thus entirely exempt from disclosure under the law. The agency has moved to keep twenty-three pages fully secret.

The Justice Department noted that the Obama administration had stipulated that the “foreseeable harm” standard applies in this case, justifying withholding records requested under the Freedom of Information Act.

The news organizations filing the FOIA suit argued that “openness prevails” in the face of doubt and that “speculative or abstract fears” are not sufficient for withholding documents.

The three news organizations sued in September in order to find out how much the FBI paid and who it hired to break into the phone of Farook (industry sources say it was an Israeli cybersecurity company, and that it was paid around $1.25). The phones used by Farook was protected by Apple’s end-to-end encryption, and the FBI had sued Apple to force it to allow the FBI access to the phone. The FBI later withdrew the suit after an Israeli security company sold the FBI a technique which allowed the agency to access the information the phone without Apple’s help.

The records released this month by the FBI deleted information about how much the FBI paid, whom it hired, and how it gained access to the phone.