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

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

The FBI said successful a statement that it had obtained nan shooter’s telephone “for examination.” Officials told reporters successful a convention telephone connected Sunday, as reported by The New York Times, that agents successful Pennsylvania were incapable to break into nan phone. It’s been shipped to nan FBI’s laboratory successful Quantico, Virginia, wherever nan FBI hopes to get past nan phone’s password protection, nan Times reported.

Investigators are still looking for penetration into nan motives of Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, who they identified arsenic nan gunman. Kevin Rojek, nan FBI typical supplier successful complaint successful Pittsburgh, told nan Times and different outlets that nan agency has entree to immoderate of Crooks’ matter messages, but they haven’t shed overmuch ray connected his beliefs.

It’s not clear what marque of telephone Crooks had, and nan FBI did not instantly respond to The Verge’s petition for comment. While rule enforcement is often successful pinch breaking into suspects’ phones — either by serving a warrant to entree a suspect’s iCloud backups aliases by utilizing third-party telephone cracking technology — it has besides butted heads pinch tech companies complete requests to bypass instrumentality encryption. In 2015, Apple refused to thief nan FBI bypass nan encryption connected nan iPhone of a shooter successful San Bernardino, California, claiming that successful bid to respond to nan government’s request, Apple would needfully person to constitute civilization package that undermined nan information of each iPhones. The FBI eventually managed to break into nan phone pinch nan thief of an Australian information company.