"We didn't find anything of value, but there was new data that helped us!"
I take this to mean that now, at last ... after court orders and third-party hacking ... the US government at last knows the gunman's high score in Candy Crush. America can relax! Whew! TOTALLY worth it.
Using Candy crush as a drone/mayhem machine (tm) pilot training is a well known thing.
And while on it, they should get a warrant to search the trash can next to the restaurant across the street. They'd find nothing of interest there as well but make another quantum leap in national security by excluding that it is being used as a secret base.
What good is it that the FBI keeps announcing and bragging about what is or isn't on the phone when they will never allow an outside party to verify its contents?
They might as well come out and say that there is video proving Lee Harvey Oswald was the only shooter, but they can't release it for national security reasons.
"Trust us, it's there," they'll exclaim.
Maybe it's their 'non-emotional' approach to restoring their international credibility... who knows. The Japanese have a great saying: the only way to improve the stupid is death.
What good is it that the FBI keeps announcing and bragging about what is or isn't on the phone when they will never allow an outside party to verify its contents?
They might as well come out and say that there is video proving Lee Harvey Oswald was the only shooter, but they can't release it for national security reasons.
"Trust us, it's there," they'll exclaim.
Maybe it's their 'non-emotional' approach to restoring their international credibility... who knows. The Japanese have a great saying: the only way to improve the stupid is death.
This is simply another case where public officials are engaging in "Security Theatre" to lull an unwitting public into believing that the public officials are "dutifully on the job" and defending us all from the legions of boogey men who are out there waiting to do us all in at a moments notice. It's the modern day equivalent of the Maginot Line, mixed with smoke and mirrors, cognitive bias exploitation, and at its core empowered by a population that is extremely poor at basic mathematics, much less probability and statistics.
Only an idiot would risk getting caugh and fail by using a work phone to plan or conduct a terrorist act. Why is it surprising to the FBI that the phone had NOTHING worthwhile? Farook destroyed his personal phone and backups prior to conducting the terrorist act. This was the phone that had everything. Dumb FBI. .
Lots of criminals make mistakes and the couple don't appear to be masterminds (reports bombs left behind didn't explode when first responders came). Perhaps he had forgotten he had the phone when he went somewhere he shouldn't have and the phones GPS has record of that.
FBI are fools. The iPhone wasn't the primary phone. Phone call logs can be obtained via the cell provider. I guess they wanted to check the guy's Words w/ Friends scores.
"the lack of information is, in itself, helpful information"
that is up there with "we cannot confirm or deny" or the great SEC settlements of "Settlement is not an admission of guilt"
*this* is precisely why the American people have no respect for the federal government or the "job" they & their appointed counterparts (fail to) perform.
You guys do recall from the initial news reports at the time of the event that their phones were found destroyed, right? That fact seems to have disappeared and ignored throughout this whole ordeal. They terrorists destroyed their personal phones. Of course the guy wasn't going to plan an attack using his work device that for all he knew could have been managed and snooped on. That this was his work phone was always seemingly veiled in these stories.
Of course, the FBI could have gotten all of this data by not being stupid enough to change Apple ID password for the phone and just letting it sync the data they were seeking back to iCloud. Of course, that wouldn't advance the cause of the surveillance state.
"the lack of information is, in itself, helpful information"
Or perhaps the opening salvo ... since we found no information, that gave us information, therefore we should have access to everyone's phone just to make sure there is a "lack of information" on all of their phones as well.
So so how exactly would a FISA request have been justified if absolutely nothing incriminating was found?
It's all perfectly clear:
At first we knew nothing. Then we confirmed that there was nothing to know, so therefore we know something, which confirms that what we didn't know was absolutely right.
Comments
"the lack of information is, in itself, helpful information"
that is up there with "we cannot confirm or deny"
or the great SEC settlements of "Settlement is not an admission of guilt"
*this* is precisely why the American people have no respect for the federal government or the "job" they & their appointed counterparts (fail to) perform.
So so how exactly would a FISA request have been justified if absolutely nothing incriminating was found?