By Sadie Gurman and Dustin Volz
WASHINGTON -- A Saudi aviation student who killed three people
on a Florida Navy base last year had extensive ties to al Qaeda,
investigators learned by accessing the gunman's iPhones, and top
U.S. law-enforcement officials accused Apple Inc. of providing
almost no help in the investigation.
The gunman, Second Lt. Mohammed Alshamrani, a member of the
Saudi air force, had been communicating with a number of operatives
of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula for years, even before he
began training with the U.S. military, officials said, a discovery
that was made based on information recovered from his two locked
iPhones.
"We received effectively no help from Apple" to access the
phones, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Chistopher Wray
said during a press conference. The struggle to unlock the
encrypted phones delayed the probe for months and potentially
jeopardized public safety, he said.
The FBI, bypassing Apple's security features, was ultimately
able to access information on both phones belonging to the gunman,
but there is no guarantee that law enforcement could do that in a
future case, Attorney General William Barr said. The information on
the devices led to a a counterterrorism operation against an
associate of Alshamrani in Yemen, Abdullah al-Maliki, Mr. Barr
said.
The remarks were the government's strongest yet against Apple's
stance on encryption, and escalated pressure on the company to
provide law enforcement access to its technology and on Congress to
consider legislation that could mandate technology companies to do
so.
In a statement, Apple said that it had responded within hours to
the FBI's first requests for help in December and provided "every
piece of information available to us," including iCloud backups,
account information and transactional data, while also lending
continuing technical expertise to agents working the case.
"The false claims made about our company are an excuse to weaken
encryption and other security measures that protect millions of
users and our national security," Apple said. "It is because we
take our responsibility to national security so seriously that we
do not believe in the creation of a backdoor -- one which will make
every device vulnerable to bad actors who threaten our national
security and the data security of our customers."
The company and other major Silicon Valley firms, including
Facebook, have said for years that undermining their security
protocols would make all of their users vulnerable to malicious
cyberactivity, a view shared by most independent experts.
Messrs. Barr and Wray didn't provide details about how they were
unable to unlock the phones.
Alshamrani posted anti-U.S. messages on social media about two
hours before he opened fire in a classroom at Naval Air Station
Pensacola on Dec. 6, killing three and wounding eight more before
he was fatally shot, officials have said. He had been communicating
with al Qaeda operatives shortly before the attack, but Mr. Wray
said his communications and radicalization dated back to as early
as 2015.
"The evidence we've been able to develop from the killer's
devices shows that the Pensacola attack was actually the brutal
culmination of years of planning and preparation by a longtime [al
Qaeda] associate," Mr. Wray said.
The gunman described a desire to learn about flying years ago,
about the same time he talked about attending the Saudi Air Force
Academy in order to carry out what he described as a "special
operation," Mr. Wray said.
"And he then pressed his plans forward, joining the Air Force
and bringing his plot here," he said.
Among other information that investigators found in Alshamrani's
iPhone was a final will purporting to explain himself, Mr. Wray
said. Al Qaeda's leader in the Arabian Peninsula released the will
two months later, claiming responsibility for the attack. Officials
wouldn't say whether al Qaeda directed the shooting, but described
his relationship with the group as deep and complex.
"It is certainly more than just inspired," Mr. Wray said.
During the December gunbattle, Alshamrani paused to open fire at
his iPhone, damaging it and causing investigators to believe it
held critical clues about his planning. The second phone was also
badly damaged. Some mobile-phone security experts said at the time
that the FBI could likely work with a third-party vendor to unlock
the phone, as it had done in previous cases, but Mr. Wray on Monday
said that option had been exhausted and that no outside parties
consulted had a solution.
"Unfortunately, the technique we developed is not a fix for our
broader Apple problem," Mr. Wray said.
Investigators secured a court order for information from the
gunman's devices within a day of the shooting but remained unable
to get into his encrypted phones. In January, Mr. Barr criticized
Apple publicly for what he labeled a refusal to provide any
substantial assistance in the investigation, and said investigators
were unable to gain entry into the phones.
At the time, however, senior Justice and FBI officials privately
told congressional staff that there was nothing Apple could do to
unlock the iPhones in question, The Wall Street Journal reported at
the time, though the officials criticized Apple for not having
created a method for doing so.
Mr. Barr on Monday also accused the iPhone maker of cooperating
with China and Russia to move data centers within their borders,
saying the company was more willing to work with authoritarian
regimes than the U.S. In its statement, Apple said it deployed
strong security protections in its data centers to ensure there are
"no backdoors in our systems" and said such practices applied to
its operations in every country.
"There is no reason why companies like Apple cannot design their
consumer products and apps to allow for court-authorized access by
law enforcement, while maintaining very high standards of data
security," Mr. Barr added. "Striking this balance should not be
left to the corporate boardrooms. It is a decision that must be
made by the American people through their representatives."
There was no immediate response from the Saudi government to the
FBI's latest findings. The kingdom was quick to condemn the attack
at the time, amid elevated tension between Washington and
Riyadh.
Alshamrani's brother, Abdullah, reached by phone on Monday,
declined to comment. "The topic is over," he said. His father told
a Saudi-owned television channel in December there had never been
any suspicions about his son.
The revelation comes as the FBI has been focused on preventing
terrorist attacks inspired by Islamic State, though Mr. Wray told
Congress in February that al Qaeda remains a top concern, even as
U.S. counterterrorism efforts have degraded the group's leadership
in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region and in Yemen.
The shooting also prompted the expulsion of 21 Saudi military
students from the training program in which the gunman took part.
They were immediately returned to Saudi Arabia on other violations.
While some of them possessed jihadist or anti-U.S. material, there
was no evidence they participated in the attack.
"Based on the FBI findings, and in addition to already executed
protective measures, the department will take further prudent and
effective measures to safeguard our people," Defense Secretary Mark
Esper said Monday.
The attack raised questions about how the Defense Department
screens potential Saudi trainees. The department suspended
operational training programs for nearly three months for all of
the approximately 850 Saudi military students training in the U.S.
Mr. Esper also approved new restrictions on the use of firearms and
access to government facilities for such students, who he said
would be continually monitored while enrolled in U.S.-based
training programs.
The FBI's findings are likely to reignite criticism in the U.S.
and Europe of Saudi Arabia, which has struggled to improve public
opinion about its day-to-day ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin
Salman, who has promised to promote a more moderate form of
Islam.
On top of the Yemen war and repression of domestic critics,
including the 2018 killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, U.S.
lawmakers have slammed Saudi Arabia for launching an oil price war
with Russia just as the coronavirus pandemic sapped global
demand.
The shooting revived memories of the turbulent period following
the Sept. 11 attacks when the kingdom's close military relationship
with the U.S. came in for intense scrutiny.
An internal Saudi government report prepared in the days
following last year's shooting identified extreme political views
in tweets believed posted by the shooter.
--Stephen Kalin in Riyadh contributed to this article.
Write to Sadie Gurman at sadie.gurman@wsj.com and Dustin Volz at
dustin.volz@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 18, 2020 16:02 ET (20:02 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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