Sen Wyden questions FBI's 'truthfulness' during Apple iPhone spat

Sen Ron Wyden (D-OR), a prominent privacy advocate and vocal defender of encryption, is questioning whether the FBI was totally honest throughout its spat with Apple over a terrorist's locked iPhone. “There are real questions about whether they’ve been straight with the public on this,” Sen Wyden said. “There’s a real truthfulness question.” “The FBI contended for weeks that this was about one phone. I and others said, ‘Well, you’re asking the company to recreate code. That is not one phone.’”

Sen Wyden is also troubled by the FBI’s response to local law enforcement officials who openly said they would use any precedent set in the Apple-FBI case to force the tech company to unlock phones they had seized. Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance said he has 175 phones in custody he is hoping to access. “Even more troubling is toward the end of it, Cyrus Vance and the whole New York people said, ‘Oh we got lots of cases, you bet we’re going to use it,’” Sen Wyden said. “The FBI didn’t brush that back.”