Dearth of new data from San Bernardino iPhone helpful to FBI investigation, sources say

Source: Appleinsider.com

Citing unnamed law enforcement officials, CNN reports an iPhone 5c used by terror suspect Syed Rizwan Farook contains no evidence of contact with ISIS sympathizers or transfer of encrypted communications during a specific time window on the day of the attack.

The development has left investigators "more confident" that Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik did not reach out to co-conspirators during an 18-minute gap in the FBI's model of events. Officials said the FBI could not put these theories to bed without access to Farook's iPhone, according to the report.

What the target iPhone 5c does not, and cannot, reveal is whether Farook and Malik used another mode of communication during the 18 minutes that have gone unaccounted for.

The innocuous iPhone, assigned to Farook by his former employer the San Bernardino County Health Department, was at the center of a divisive court battle involving Apple and the Justice Department. FBI officials requested Apple's help in extracting the passcode-locked phone's data, an action that would require the company to thwart its own security systems. Apple declined, setting up a court battle that in turn sparked debate over how best to weigh public rights to privacy with national security.

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