FBI Serves Apple Warrant to Gain US Senator's iCloud Data

[MacRumors]

Apple has been served a warrant by the FBI to obtain information on the iCloud account of U.S. Senator Richard Burr, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who is being investigated for controversial stock trades linked to the coronavirus pandemic.

According to the Los Angeles Times, FBI agents served Apple the warrant "in recent days" to gain access to the iCloud data. The information gathered from the warrant's execution was then used as evidence to serve another warrant to obtain the Republican senator's iPhone from his home.

Federal agents seized a cellphone belonging to a prominent Republican senator on Wednesday night as part of the Justice Department's investigation into controversial stock trades he made as the novel coronavirus first struck the U.S., a law enforcement official said. Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, turned over his phone to agents after they served a search warrant on the lawmaker at his residence in the Washington area, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss a law enforcement action.

According to the report, the Senator is being investigated for selling a significant percentage of his stock portfolio in 33 different transactions on February 13, just as his committee was receiving daily COVID-19 briefings and a week before the stock market sharply declined.

The value of the trades is believed to be between $628,000 and $1.72 million. Much of that was said to have been invested in businesses that in subsequent weeks were hit hard by the plunging market, the implication being that the trades were made on the basis of information Burr received about the pandemic in the daily briefings.

Apple can decrypt an iCloud backup and provide the information to authorities when ordered to do so via a warrant, because the company views privacy and security issues differently between physical devices that can be lost and iCloud. With iCloud, it needs to be accessible by Apple so that it can restore the data for the user.

iCloud backups contain iMessages and texts, content purchase history, photos and videos, device settings, app data, voicemail password, and health data. Backups don't include information that's easily downloadable, such as emails from servers or apps, and while iCloud backup does encompass iCloud keychain, Wi-Fi passwords, and passwords for third-party services, that information is encrypted in a way that makes it inaccessible to Apple.

More than two years ago, Apple reportedly informed the FBI that it planned to roll out end-to-end encryption for iCloud backups, but ultimately dropped the plan at some point after the FBI objected, although it remains unclear if the federal agency was a factor in the decision.

Note: Due to the political or social nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Political News forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Article Link: FBI Serves Apple Warrant to Gain US Senator's iCloud Data

 

[RogerWilco]

No mention of Senator Feinstein? She dumped shares as well.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

No mention of Senator Feinstein? She dumped shares as well.

Maybe she doesn’t store stuff on iCloud? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[69Mustang]

No mention of Senator Feinstein? She dumped shares as well.

If the FBI gets a warrant for her info (and the info of other members from both parties suspected of dumping stock), I'm pretty sure it will be mentioned. 'Til then, there's only mention of the one person affected by the warrant.

 

[gnasher729]

Apple's lawyers will check that the warrant is legal, and if it is legal, they will provide whatever data they can access that is mentioned in the warrant. There may be some way for a person to legally stop a warrant against them from being executed.

 

[madrag]

What a disgrace. This is disgraceful, profiting from this pandemic (I'm not naive, I know many are profiting, but these guys (and galls) are truly shameless).

I hope they also find other bad stuff there.

 

[Aluminum213]

So this is how it begins.....

 

[mw360]

No mention of Senator Feinstein? She dumped shares as well.

Out of the 4 senators under scrutiny, Burr is the only one whose initial statement admitted to making the sales personally. The others claimed their portfolios were managed by third parties, which presumably the FBI was able to easily verify.

 

[littyboy]

No mention of Senator Feinstein? She dumped shares as well.

Probably cuz she's playing the "I don't make the trades, someone else does it for me" card. Apparently it's "blinded" but we all know that's a lie. No worries, rich people will come after her.

Burr basically had no excuse and said he did it based on public info instead of private lol.

 

[mozumder]

Our government fighting back against the corruption virus that's infected it over the last 3 years. So proud!

 

[Dwalls90]

No mention of Senator Feinstein? She dumped shares as well.

Whenever Jim Inhofe and Kelly Loeffler are also investigated.

 

[JosephAW]

Good thing I didn't sell my stock on Feb 13 or I be under investigation too. Oh wait. I'm not a congressman so it okay for me to do so.

 

[Fender2112]

Was there anyone who didn't dump stocks?

I'm not a big fan of any of these politicians. But seriously, I'm sure anyone who trades stocks regularly saw this coming and sold off stocks only to buy them back when the market bottomed out.

Stock Market 101: Buy low, sell high.

 

[citysnaps]

No mention of Senator Feinstein? She dumped shares as well.

No, the story is about Sen. Burr.
[automerge]1589458111[/automerge]

Was there anyone who didn't dump stocks?

I'm not a big fan of any of these politicians. But seriously, I'm sure anyone who trades stocks regularly saw this coming and sold off stocks only to buy them back when the market bottomed out.

Stock Market 101: Buy low, sell high.

Yes, tens/hundreds of thousands no doubt. But without the unfair benefit of exploiting insider information. Which is illegal.

 

[russell_314]

No mention of Senator Feinstein? She dumped shares as well.

This so much. I like how the article doesn’t even mention her and nothing ever happened to her. I guess you have to be Republican for it to be ilegal 🙄

 

[citysnaps]

Good thing I didn't sell my stock on Feb 13 or I be under investigation too. Oh wait. I'm not a congressman so it okay for me to do so.

More importantly, you did not have access to privileged information, unavailable to others, that you could exploit to your benefit.

 

[mw360]

So this is how it begins.....

When a senator who openly advocated and voted for corruption, gets investigated for corruption? I think that began a long while ago.

 

[citysnaps]

This so much. I like how the article doesn’t even mention her and nothing ever happened to her. I guess you have to be Republican for it to be ilegal 🙄

No, you need to have personally exploited privileged information unavailable to others.

 

[paulvee]

This so much. I like how the article doesn’t even mention her and nothing ever happened to her. I guess you have to be Republican for it to be ilegal 🙄

Don’t be such a victim.
[automerge]1589458697[/automerge]

 

[russell_314]

No, you need to have personally exploited privileged information unavailable to others.

So exactly what does Senator Feinstein did. It still doesn’t explain why she wasn’t charged

 

[paul4339]

Two of the four senators are being more closely investigated because there were a series of trades shortly after confidential committee briefings.

One even dumped a bunch of stocks (27) and piled money into Citrix. So I guess it set off some flags.

 

[citysnaps]

So exactly what does Senator Feinstein did. It still doesn’t explain why she wasn’t charged

If her stock shares were managed by a blind trust, with no input/instruction based on privileged information from her, then that is not insider trading.

 

[xxray]

I really wish Apple had an end-to-end encryption option for iCloud.

 

[russell_314]

If her stock shares were managed by a blind trust, with no input/instruction based on privileged information from her, then that is not insider trading.

Agreed but that’s not what happened. She has information about what was going on and gave it to her husband so he could sell their stock

 

[citysnaps]

Agreed but that’s not what happened. She has information about what was going on and gave it to her husband so he could sell their stock

That's a very serious charge, one that should not be made lightly. Can you present evidence to support your allegation?