[Infowarrior] - FBI's San Francisco Chief: We Heart Apple, They Train Our Cops

[Richard Forno]

FBI's San Francisco Chief: We Heart Apple, They Train Our Cops
 
Thomas Fox-Brewster , Forbes Staff 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2018/01/16/apple-and-the-fbi-are-closer-than-you-think/#6555920b4b63

John Bennett, head of the California division of the FBI, believes the relationship between law enforcement and Silicon Valley giants like Apple is improving.

Since its 2016 bust-up with Apple over access to the iPhone of San Bernardino terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook, some at the FBI have tried a different tack in dealing with an increasingly privacy-conscious Silicon Valley. Just as Apple has recently been offering olive branches of a sort to cops trying to access data on encrypted iPhones, there's been an effort on the feds' behalf to develop a more cooperative approach.

John Bennett, special agent in charge at the FBI San Francisco division, is one of those presenting a new narrative of bonhomie and camaraderie. Bennett was reportedly one of the pivotal figures in the San Bernardino incident, though he won't tell Forbes much about it. And he now finds himself as something of a peacemaker at the center of the modern-day Crypto Wars, where smartphone and software giants develop increasingly powerful encryption, giving citizens much improved privacy, whilst the cops try to undermine those protections to get at criminals benefitting from the improvements. Bennett's been a solider in the war for some time now, having been the section chief of the Digital Forensics and Analysis Section in the Operational Technology Division, one of the FBI's main hacking units based out of Quantico, Virginia. And he'll continue to find himself in the middle of tussles between feds and the increasingly pro-privacy techies; the San Francisco bureau is a go-between for national FBI units and Silicon Valley giants like Apple.

After speaking to Bennett just before Christmas, it was clear the relationship between Apple and law enforcement (in San Francisco at least) was much closer than the stream of media stories would have one believe. He had much praise for Apple, particularly for its direct assistance for law enforcement, not just at the FBI but at local police departments too.

That included training at the FBI's Silicon Valley Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory (RCFL). "They've offered training for Mac forensics and they do that for a lot of law enforcement. We just happen to be in their backyard, so it's a little easier for when they want to do a class," Bennett said. "We schedule something, they come to the facility and we bring people in from around the country to work with them. They offer those forensic training classes, not only to the FBI but to local departments too."

How Apple trains cops

There's little-to-zero public information on Apple's training for law enforcement and it's not something the iPhone maker has ever discussed openly. But one source close to the company told Forbes that whilst its trainings don't include information on breaking Apple security to fully access devices, employees walk the FBI through the best processes to get information from suspect iPhones, Macs and iCloud accounts, all in line with the company's public guidelines. Forensic agents are given updates to any changes to iOS or MacOS that could have an impact on investigations, the source said.

Recommended by Forbes

Much of Apple's time is given to local and regional police, who have understanding of neither the tech nor the process to request data from Apple, the source added. (They detailed one case in which a local police department printed out 15,000 pages when it received a data file from Apple, rather than dealing with it digitally.) Apple provides its training free of charge too.

Looking back at the San Bernardino shooting and its aftermath, Bennett recalls much being made of the government vs. Apple story. "A lot of people made a lot of hay that everyone was at war with each other.... Apple is a great company that we have tremendous respect for," he told Forbes.

"We have a great relationship with them from a local field perspective and also from understanding products and what they do from an engineering standpoint, which [goes back] to Quantico." That Virginia base is where the FBI carries out much of its hacking and offensive work against criminals and their tech, in particular via its computer forensics labs and the Data Intercept Technology Unit (DITU).

According to Bennett, the relationship isn't one-way traffic. "From our experience in San Francisco, we have meetings with Apple and they are not only a great company but they're also victims. Their stuff gets hit and their employees get in harm's way, so they call us locally on a lot of things they need help for ."

Some love lost

Not that there's a tabula rasa from which to write a new love story between tech giants and the cops. Bennett's approach as chief of a department that acts as a liaison between Silicon Valley and wider American law enforcement appears, on the face of it, less belligerent than that of his colleagues. Earlier this month, his boss and FBI head Christopher Wray gave a keynote at Fordham University, during the FBI International Conference on Cyber Security, in which he said whilst the FBI supported strong encryption, software needed "to be thoughtfully designed so they don't undermine the lawful tools we need to keep this country safe."

"Being unable to access nearly 7,800 devices is a major public safety issue. That's more than half of all the devices we attempted to access in that timeframe - and that's just at the FBI," Wray said. "That's not even counting a lot of devices sought by other law enforcement agencies - our state, local and foreign counterparts. It also doesn't count important situations outside of accessing a specific device, like when terrorists, spies and criminals use encrypted messaging apps to communicate."

Just last week, as reported by Motherboard, FBI forensic expert Stephen Flatley called Apple "jerks" and "evil geniuses" for making it increasingly difficult for investigators to get into devices.

And last year, it appeared another standoff was imminent, as the feds sought access to the iPhone SE of Texas shooter Devin Kelley, who killed 26 at First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs in November. Apple reportedly offered the FBI assistance with getting data from Devin's phone shortly after it learned cops wanted access to the phone, but didn't receive a response from the FBI.

Forbes was told by a source familiar with the matter that in order to get into that phone, the FBI has approached at least one third party asking for assistance to get into Kelley's iPhone, just as the agency did for the San Bernardino device, when it coughed up somewhere between $900,000 and $1.5 million to the successful bidder. Forbes was unable to determine if a contract was awarded or if the FBI found a way into the device. A spokesperson for the FBI said it didn't have any more to add to the matter than what was already public.

Bennett isn't entirely enamored by Apple's focus on improving iPhone security with layers of encryption. But he understands the Cupertino company's approach. "They're in an interesting environment where they have to service a legal process from agencies, from FBI to GCHQ to Chinese to Russian services. They are trying to make sure everyone is playing from a level field.

"What Apple has tried to do in the past is engineer their ability out of having access to people's private data, and that's the balance former [FBI] director [James] Comey had talked about, the balance between safety and privacy. We're not here to say one is better than the other."