The FBI Spent More Than $1 Million to Hack One Potentially Useless Phone

Ximagination/iStockPhoto

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


It turns out the FBI’s 11-hour solution to its huge public fight with Apple didn’t come cheap.

FBI director James Comey said on Thursday that the agency paid more than $1 million to unnamed private-sector hackers for help in unlocking the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters. The FBI first attempted to make Apple write software that would allow law enforcement to unlock the phone quickly, but the company refused and said the request could unconstitutionally expand government authority. The case sparked an uproar over digital privacy as well as a major court battle, which stopped only when the FBI announced it had received the hackers’ help and withdrew its order to Apple.

Comey, speaking at the Aspen Security Forum, didn’t give a specific price for the hack, but said it cost the agency more than he would make in the next seven years of his term as director. The FBI director makes at least $181,500 a year by law, putting the cost of the hack at a minimum of $1.27 million, by Comey’s estimate. An FBI press officer could not confirm the accuracy of Comey’s estimate or provide a specific cost.

“It was worth it,” Comey told the audience in Aspen. But it’s not clear how much value the hacking method or the phone actually has. Comey has repeatedly said that the method used to break into the phone would work only on an iPhone 5C running iOS 9, like the San Bernardino phone, and that Apple could discover and fix the security flaw that allowed the hack to work. And on Tuesday, CNN reported that the phone “didn’t contain evidence of contacts with other ISIS supporters or the use of encrypted communications during the period the FBI was concerned about.” The FBI argues the lack of information is valuable evidence in and of itself.

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate