FBI might need help to open up Adam's Apple

We've seen this movie before. The FBI might call on Apple to unlock the iPhone belonging to indicted New York City Mayor Eric Adams whose phone was seized by the G-men last November 7th. Just the day before, Adams claims to have changed the passcode on his device and doesn't remember the new one. Michael Alcazar, a retired NYPD detective, called the locked phone a "speed bump" in the federal investigation. "I think tech-savvy investigators would still be able to get into the phone anyway . . . But it will slow down the investigation," Alcazar said.

A federal judge would have to issue a search warrant before Apple or any IT crew would be allowed to try and open the Mayor's phone. Jefferey Greco, a Manhattan-based criminal defense attorney, says that it isn't clear whether the Mayor's phone could be unlocked. In February 2016, a federal judge ordered Apple to unlock the iPhone 5c belonging to San Bernandino assassin Syed Farook. The FBI believed that other targets of the deceased assassin might be discovered on the phone.

Apple refused to unlock the device with CEO Tim Cook making it clear that Apple will not supply a backdoor to the iPhone. If you fail after 10 attempts to unlock the iPhone, it will automatically wipe all of the data on the device which is why the FBI was reluctant to try brute force to unlock Farook's phone. Eventually, a book written by former FBI director James Comey revealed that the FBI spent $1.4 million to unlock Farook's iPhone 5c, and nothing of any value was discovered.

At the start of 2020, Apple found itself in a familiar scenario when the FBI once again approached Apple about unlocking a pair of iPhones belonging to a terrorist. This time, the iPhone owner was Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, the man considered responsible for the death of three men at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida late in 2019. The FBI eventually unlocked the phones without Apple's help.

Now here we are in 2024 and once again law enforcement is calling on Apple to open Mayor Eric Adam's iPhone. Defense attorney Greco believes that Apple's response to the FBI will be something like, "That’s between you and the user. We’re not getting involved. We protect our users’ right to privacy."