Apple says investigators ruined best way to access terrorist data - CNET

One of the FBI's key arguments for forcing Apple to unlock the phone is that agents believed Farook intentionally stopped backing up his work phone to Apple's iCloud service to keep some information secret, according to the Feb. 16, 40-page Department of Justice request that led to the court order.

In January, while assisting the FBI and the Department of Justice with the ongoing investigation, Apple engineers suggested a simpler idea than bypassing the iPhone's passcode security. They recommended that the iPhone be connected to a known Wi-Fi network such as Farook's home or workplace and plug into a power source so it could automatically create a new iCloud backup oveight. If successful, that backup might have contained the missing information between the October backup and December 2, when the San Beardino massacre occurred.

It wasn't clear whether the auto-backup idea would work, but the FBI never got the chance to try, Apple said.

The FBI didn't respond to a request for comment. But the FBI told CBS News on Friday that someone with San Beardino County (Farook's employer, which actually owned the phone) remotely reset the password on Farook's account in the hours after the attack.

According to senior Apple executives, the password reset meant that someone would need to log in to the phone and enter the new password before it could sync with Apple's iCloud servers again. That wouldn't be possible without knowing Farood's iPhone passcode, which is the very thing that the FBI hopes to obtain by compelling Apple to modify its software and bypass its own security features.

In the court order, a federal judge offered Apple the ability to use "an alteate technological means" to provide the FBI with access to Farook's iPhone data, if one existed. According to Apple, the auto-backup scheme was the best idea to date.