WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation said on Wednesday that it did not own the rights to the technical method it used to open an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters and therefore "cannot" submit details of the mechanism to an interagency review process.
In a statement, Amy S. Hess, the FBI's executive assistant director for science and technology said that when it hired an "outside party" to unlock the phone, it did not "purchase the rights to technical details about how the method functions" and hence does not "have enough technical information about any vulnerability" in the iPhone which the interagency review process could consider for sharing with other government agencies or Apple itself.
(Reporting by Mark Hosenball)