FBI is working to break into the phone of the Trump rally shooter

Investigators are moving to interruption into the telephone of the antheral who changeable astatine erstwhile President Donald Trump astatine a Pennsylvania rally connected Saturday. The shooting is being probed arsenic an assassination attempt.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation said successful a statement that it had obtained the shooter’s telephone “for examination.” Officials told reporters successful a league telephone Sunday, as reported by The New York Times, that agents successful Pennsylvania were incapable to interruption into the phone. It’s been shipped to the FBI’s laboratory successful Quantico, VA, wherever the FBI hopes to get past the phone’s password protection, the Times reported.

Investigators are inactive looking for penetration into the motives of Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old from Bethel Park, PA who they identified arsenic the gunman. Kevin Rojek, the FBI peculiar cause successful complaint successful Pittsburgh, told the Times and different outlets that the bureau has entree to immoderate of Crooks’ substance messages, but they haven’t shed overmuch airy connected his beliefs.

It’s not wide what marque of telephone Crooks had, and the FBI did not instantly respond to The Verge’s petition for comment. While instrumentality enforcement is often palmy with breaking into suspects’ phones — either by serving a warrant to entree a suspect’s iCloud backups oregon by utilizing third-party telephone cracking technology — it has besides butted heads with tech companies implicit requests to bypass instrumentality encryption. In 2015, Apple refused to assistance the FBI bypass the encryption connected the iPhone of a shooter successful San Bernardino, CA, claiming that successful bid to respond to the government’s request, Apple would needfully person to constitute customized bundle that undermined the information of each iPhones. The FBI eventually managed to interruption into the phone with the assistance of an Australian information company.