http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/04/21/james-comey-fbi-spent-over-1-million-to-unlock-san-bernardino-attackers-iphone.html?intcmp=hplnws

The FBI paid a non-governmental third party over $1 million for technology that allowed the agency to unlock an iPhone 5C that belonged to San Bernardino gunman Syed Farook, according to a remark made by FBI director James Comey at a moderated discussion in London on Thursday.

When asked exactly how much his agency shelled out for the technology, Comey told the audience at the Aspen Security Forum, a lot. He added the figure is more than I will make in the remainder of this job  which is seven years and four months  for sure.

According to federal statue, the FBI director shall receive compensation at the rate prescribed for level II of the Federal Executive Salary Schedule." As of January 2015, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management lists level II pay at $183,300 annually. Taking into account Director Comeys remaining time in office, he stands to earn roughly $1.34 million.

The FBI chief first acknowledged that the agency purchased the unlocking method during a speech at Kenyon College on April 6. FBI and the Justice Department have declined to elaborate on exact details of the method or identify whether the assisting third party is a domestic or foreign entity.

Citing intelligence sources, Fox News has reported the FBI purchased what amounts to a "zero day" from this third party. This type of cybersecurity flaw is a previously unknown vulnerability to a specific piece of computer software that cyber actors exploit to gain access to a system or override certain functionalities.

As cybersecurity experts explain, zero days serve as the preeminent method of entry for hackers, given that their targets can't protect against flaws they don't know exist.

Comey said on Thursday that he feels as though the unlocking tool  which only works on iPhone 5Cs running the iOS9 operating system, according to his own statements  was worth it.

The bureaus top official added that the purchase of third party tools for the purpose of unlocking encrypted devices is not the preferred road the FBI would like to travel in investigating crimes and terrorism cases.

I'm hoping that we can somehow get to a place where we have a sensible solution, or set of solutions, that doesn't involve hacking and doesn't involve spending tons of money in a way that's unscalable, Comey said.

He echoed there being a need for a continued national conversation over the issues surrounding universal encryption and how that factors into the privacy versus security debate.

This will be a feature of our work - there will be other litigation, I'm sure - but it will be a feature of our work, increasingly, over the months and years to come, Comey explained.

Justice Department officials have said that it is still unknown whether the FBI will disclose the vulnerability used to unlock Syed Farooks iPhone 5C to Apple.

So some youtube kid made 1 million

taxpayers spent $1M

Funny, all that taxpayer money spent and no word if they found anything of value.

Seems worth it to me

..and it got exactly jack and shit worth of intel for that million $ as well.

They did not, as anyone would have guessed.

So fire him and contract his job out.  

I mean, that's pretty much what the FBI did, anyways.   Subcontracted their police work.

But we should all sleep better at night knowing that our government will spend whatever it takes to keep us safe.

and what did they find???????????????????????



NOTHING!!!

It was never really about "this phone" and value.  Now they have the technology to hack all Apple phones.

Some 14yr old in Simi Valley just made a million dollars.

The federal government farts and it spends a million dollars.

They regard a million the way your or I would regard the pennies you see amid the piss-crust on the floor of a public restroom near the urinals.

It's nothing to them.

Yep. Good for them.

False.  Now they can hack iPhone 5C's only.

Assuming they are telling the truth and it actually was cracked.  I can't see a reason (or evidence) to believe them.

Think about the possibilities if our govt wasn't wasteful with our money.

It's cool they can have the home office print up more. Not only that they can fabricate need for anything else.

glad they unlocked it, it's a big Fuck You! to Apple

Was there a reason we would have known there would be no useful information on the phones?

pending confirmation that my sarcasm meter is broken.

I think they got traceable chatter from the unlocking announcement.

Whether they unlocked it or not is irrelevant.

What, that someone (ostensibly) exploited a hack that was previously identified and fixed in later phone hardware/software? Oh yeah, that's a huge 'fuck you' to Apple

The FBI, their bullshit agenda and their bullshit waste of taxpayer money to *hacker groups*, FFS, are what deserve the 'fuck you'.

Money well spent

Well if they had taken Apple to court how much would that have cost? Way more than $1million. I would guess into the 100's of millions as Apple has more money than the government does to defend itself in court.

More like they paid some Russian mafia hacker group to unlock it for them.  

That's no biggie when you consider that the average insurance payout for a plane crash victim is $1,000,000 and the Medical bills for survivors will be in the Millions.

Was apple helping terrorists?

I didn't say "known", I said, "guessed".  There were not "phones".  There was only one, and it was a phone supplied to him by his employer.  It was a work phone.  All of their personal phones were very carefully destroyed beyond recovery before they executed their attack.  So if the question is whether there was a reason we should have guessed there was nothing on the phone, then yes, there was a good reason.

Yeah boy, they really showed them.

If the FBI found something useful it would have been plastered all over the news as "Apple should have helped us we found XYZ evidence"

The fact there is silence indicates they found zilch.

To be fair, the Genius bar would have charged the FBI 2 million

They said there was nothing on it.

This.

It was just an excuse to get that million to do it.

Sure sounds like he is happy the govt has another way to access private information.

Probably spent a lot more than that in their lawsuit against Apple.

Nothing new, Stuxnet exploited four previously unknown zero-day flaws.

Kharn