The FBI paid more than a million dollars for the software solution that allowed agents to open an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino attackers, according to a comment made by Director James Comey.
Asked Thursday at a security conference in London how much the FBI paid for the tool that cracked Syed Farook’s phone and ended a California court battle with Apple, Comey said, "A lot, more than I will make in the remainder of this job, which is seven years and four months, for sure.”
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“But it was in my view worth it,” Comey said.
The FBI director is paid about $180,000 a year. So multiplying that by 7.3 years yields a figure of about $1.3 million. FBI officials were not immediately available to confirm the figure.
Apple and the FBI were bound for a courtroom showdown over the iPhone in March, until the government said that it had found a way to get data off the device without the company’s help.
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While the federal law enforcement agency has remained mostly mum about how it got info off the iPhone 5C used by Farook — not even telling Apple how it did it — Comey has let a few details slip in recent weeks. Earlier this month, he told a crowd at Kenyon College that the FBI had “purchased” the technique from a still-unidentified third party.
Comey also said that the tool only worked on a “narrow slice of phones.”
