Judge tells Apple it must help FBI get inside San Bernardino shooter's phone

(Image credit: Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

last updated 17 February 2016

On Tuesday, a federal judge ruled that Apple must provide federal investigators with "reasonable technical assistance" in accessing encrypted data on an iPhone that belonged to Syed Farook, one of the San Bernardino shooters, court documents say.

Prosecutors said they have been unable to access "relevant, critical" data on the phone because the iPhone is locked and they can't break in. On Dec. 2, Farook and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, killed 14 people at the Inland Regional Center, and prosecutors say the iPhone 5c, issued to Farook by his employer, the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health, could show who the shooters were communicating with before the attack, and if they had any help planning and carrying out the massacre. The judge said Apple must provide assistance like bypassing the auto-erase function and letting investigators send an unlimited amount of passwords to use in trying to unlock the phone.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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