Hunting terror ‘cell’
AG: Apple fails to aid Fla. probe
Attorney General William Barr said Monday that the deadly December shooting at Florida’s Naval Air Station Pensacola was an act of terrorism, as he publicly called out Apple for not unlocking two iPhones used by the gunman.
Barr’s appeal was an escalation of an ongoing fight between the Justice Department and Apple, pitting personal privacy against public safety.
“This situation perfectly illustrates why it is critical that the public be able to get access to digital evidence,” Barr said at a news conference in Washington, calling on the tech giant and other tech companies to cooperate more and complaining that Apple had provided no “substantive assistance.”
Apple gave investigators materials from the iCloud account of the gunman, Second Lt. Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, a member of the Saudi air force training with the American military, who shot dead three sailors and wounded eight others on Dec. 6.
But the company refused to help the FBI open the cellphones because it would undermine claims that its phones were secure.
Justice Department officials said that they need access to Alshamrani’s phones to see messages from encrypted apps like Signal or WhatsApp to determine whether he had acted alone or had accomplices at the Florida base.
“The evidence shows that the shooter was motivated by jihadist ideology,” Barr said, citing a message Mr. Alshamrani posted on 2019’s anniversary of Sept. 11, warning that “the countdown has begun.”
He also visited the 9/11 Memorial in lower Manhattan over the Thanksgiving holiday.
Alshamrani posted anti-American, anti-Israel and jihadist messages on social media, including just two hours before he attacked the sprawling base, Barr said.
During a 15-minute shooting spree, Alshamrani shot at a photo of President Trump as well as a former president, according to FBI Deputy Director David Bowdich, and witnesses at the scene said he made statements critical of American military actions overseas. Bowdich said that while Alshamrani did not seem to be inspired by one specific terrorist group, he harbored anti-American and anti-Israel views and felt “violence was necessary.”
Monday’s announcement offered the most definitive account of the gunman’s actions and thinking. Bowdich said investigators had interviewed more than 500 people and collected more than 42 terabytes of digital information.
But “so far Apple has not given us any substantive assistance,” Barr said, though aides later clarified that Apple had given investigators access to cloud data linked to the gunman.