It’s an easy mistake to make. You’ve been away on a silent yoga retreat. You spent the entire weekend watching Sky Sports. You overslept and all the newspapers had been sold by the time you got to Costcutter. These things happen. It’s just a bit unfortunate when you happen to be the leader of the Labour party and you’ve managed to miss the biggest crisis in the Conservative party since the last election.
David Cameron had ostensibly come to the Commons to give a statement on the EU summit on migrants, but his more important mission was to firefight the damage done by the resignation of Iain Duncan Smith. “Europe ... migrant ... Turkey,” he rambled, only partially engaged. When your own career is on the line, the lives of a few hundred thousand Syrian refugees are just collateral damage.
With migrants now off the menu, Dave moved on to the main business. “Can I just say how much I respect and love the former work and pensions secretary,” he said. “Iain was the most brilliant and friendly colleague I’ve ever had and I can’t describe how much I’ll miss squeezing his chubby little cheeks as we josh one another about giving the poor and the disabled a hard time. And when I called him a complete and utter shit, what I really meant was that I was totally delighted Princess Duncan Smith (PDS) had conveniently remembered he had a conscience during the EU referendum campaign after managing to live quite happily without one for the past six years.”
A collective “Ahhh, how sweet!” rumbled through the packed Tory benches who had been briefed that One Nation Conservatism – or One Nation Conservatism Minus One, as PDS was nowhere to be seen – meant trying to pretend everyone was in it together, rather than ripping out each other’s throats over Europe. “Long live Dave! Long live Iain!” The only person who seemed to be fooled by this veneer of unity was Jeremy Corbyn.
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“I thank the prime minister for giving me advance notice of half his statement,” Corbyn bellowed, having clearly decided that shouting made him sound more commanding. What Corbyn didn’t say was that because Dave had only let him see half the statement, he was only going to comment on half the statement. Maybe he thought it would be impolite to mention PDS; maybe he had scribbled down some thoughts and couldn’t read his own writing; maybe he is just a terrible performer in the chamber.
The Labour benches waited. And waited. And waited. Surely Corbyn would seize the moment to twist the knife into a government that PDS had described as lacking in compassion? This was the moment for which they had been praying for nearly a year; a self-inflicted Tory death-spiral. The Conservative benches waited. And waited. And waited. This was the moment when they had to sit back and take the hit for their indifference to the disabled and their disunity over Europe.
“Europe... migrants... Turkey... Thank you and good night,” Corbyn bellowed. It took the Labour backbenchers a while to realise their leader had passed up the opportunity to deliver a devastating – possibly terminal – blow to the Dave and George show. After the shock, the disappointment soon set in. A few of the Labour old guard tried to make good the loss with some PDS jibes, but the moment had passed.
Dave looked like a man who couldn’t believe his luck. As did those on the Conservative benches behind him. They had got away with it. They were once more free to squabble among themselves to their heart’s content. One by one, the Eurosceptics rose to moan about the EU and the Turks. Dave couldn’t have been more charming. PDS may be gone, but he is not forgotten. Yet.
For the Tories it was a case of lightning striking twice on the same day, as earlier in the afternoon the shadow chancellor had tabled an urgent question on the government’s U-turn on disability payments and the £4bn hole it left in last week’s budget. This wasn’t a question George Osborne particularly wanted to answer – he had some holiday plans to make – so he sent David Gauke, a junior treasury minister, along to take the hit instead.
“The chancellor is insulting the house by not turning up in person,” McDonnell shouted. Like Corbyn, he now mistakes volume for passion; perhaps they’re both only half way through their media training. McDonnell was so busy being insulted by George’s absence, he completely forgot to go for the jugular. Gauke merely smiled and soaked it up. This wasn’t the first time George had used him as a punchbag and doubtless it wouldn’t be the last.
It took Labour’s Yvette Cooper to get to the heart of the government’s chaotic budget, but Gauke merely shrugged. A £4bn black hole in the budget was well above his pay grade. “The questions are deteriorating in quality,” he observed drily. As were his answers. But being a bit rubbish had been always been Gauke’s main objective. Better that than truthful.
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The long and winding road: how Paul McCartney is clawing back his catalogue
To misquote Oscar Wilde, to lose one attempt to control your publishing may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose a second looks like carelessness. This, however, is the prism through which to understand the move by Paul McCartney – which started in December last year but has only recently been made public – to take control of his composition rights during his time in the Beatles.
In brief, under the US Copyright Act of 1976, writers can move to recapture the publishers’ share of songs they wrote before 1978. Their claim must be filed with the US copyright office between two and 10 years before a 56-year period (or, more precisely, two consecutive 28-year terms; if the songwriter has died, their estate can make a claim for the rights after the first 28-year term) elapses. McCartney’s initial filing covers 32 songs, but not all are from the early days of the Beatles, which would start to become available in chronological order. Among the songs named are several from the Abbey Road album, released in the band’s dying days in 1969.
Context is all. As revealed in face-clasping detail in Peter Doggett’s forensic analysis of their injudicious business deals in You Never Give Me Your Money, the Beatles signed a string of abysmal contracts that monumentally undervalued their worth and that today have still not been properly unpicked. Their 1962 management contract with Brian Epstein was their first bad deal because it was weighted so heavily away from them; their second bad deal was their publishing deal covering, originally, the compositions of Lennon and McCartney. In order to understand why McCartney is doing what he is doing, it’s essential to trace the bumpy history of his assignment of rights.
The Beatles on TV in 1964.
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The Beatles on TV in 1964. Photograph: ITV/Rex Features
Frustrated by the lacklustre work of Ardmore & Beechwood, EMI’s publishing company in the early 1960s, on Love Me Do, producer George Martin suggested the Beatles speak to publisher Dick James. From that sprung Northern Songs, a company set up specifically to handle their publishing rights. McCartney later claimed he never read the contract properly and simply trusted Epstein to do a good deal. He didn’t. Between them, Epstein, McCartney and Lennon held half the shares while James and his business partner Charles Silver held the other half. (Martin turned down a stake as he felt it was a conflict of interest.) It was only later that McCartney and Lennon discovered they were not in the driving seat of the company – or even in the back seat. They were in the boot.
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After Epstein’s death in 1967, they attempted to renegotiate the deal but reached an impasse. Then in 1969, without warning, James sold his stake to ATV, TV mogul Lew Grade’s company, for £1.5m. The Beatles got their ruthless business manager Allen Klein to attempt to buy out ATV in 1969, but a combination of the band’s relationship turning toxic and, amazingly, them running out of money meant it never happened, and they sold their stake in October 1969 for £3.5m. An earlier attempt to buy out the 14% owned by a group of investors known as The Consortium also failed.
It took another twist in 1982 when Australian businessman Robert Holmes à Court acquired ATV’s holding company. McCartney, meanwhile, was buying up publishing catalogues including those of Buddy Holly and Broadway shows. When working with Michael Jackson in the early 1980s, he made the mistake of showing the singer a binder with all the publishing rights he owned, telling him he regretted losing his own composition rights so was buying up other catalogues. Jackson, then the biggest pop star on the planet, needed to invest the huge sums he was earning and got his business manager John Branca to investigate publishing options. In September 1984, Branca called Jackson and said: “I think I heard of a catalogue for sale.” It was ATV, which had a catalogue of about 4,000 titles with an estimated two-thirds of its revenue coming from Lennon/McCartney songs.
Collaborators … McCartney and Michael Jackson in 1983.
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Collaborators … McCartney and Michael Jackson in 1983. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis
Through complex negotiations and brazen brinkmanship, Branca outmanoeuvred not just Richard Branson but also Marty Bandier, then head of EMI Music Publishing and now, paradoxically, the CEO of Sony/ATV, to close the deal for $47.5m. Two things swung it in Jackson’s favour, even though Bandier had offered more money. Jackson agreed to appear at an event in Perth for Holmes à Court’s favourite charity; he also removed the rights for Penny Lane so that Holmes à Court could give them as a gift to his daughter, Penny. Branca claimed that he cleared the deal with Yoko Ono first, making sure she and McCartney were not going to make a joint offer. “No, no, if we [Ono and McCartney] had bought it, then we’d [Ono and ATV] have to deal with Paul,” she reportedly said.
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Having burned through a frightening amount of cash over the next decade, Jackson needed capital desperately, so Branca tabled a deal in 1995 whereby Sony could take a stake in ATV as part of a 50/50 joint venture. Zack O’Malley Greenburg’s book Michael Jackson, Inc explains just how unusual the deal was. “The company paid Jackson $115m for the privilege of merging its less valuable catalogue with his, plus an annual guarantee just shy of $10m that has since been negotiated upwards.” The deal also gave Jackson total control over his compositions under Mijac Music as well as those by other songwriters.
More than anything, this illustrates a huge sea change in how musicians approached the music business. Pop stars in the 80s learned to become incredibly business savvy precisely because the stars of two decades earlier had been recklessly naive in their dealings with the money side of things. This must surely have stung McCartney – that the next generation of pop stars had learned from his mistakes, made more money than him and could now buy and sell him. That process continued last week, when Sony announced it was buying out the Jackson estate’s share in Sony/ATV for $750m.
McCartney and his third wife Nancy Shevell.
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McCartney and his third wife Nancy Shevell. Photograph: Sipa/Rex/Shutterstock
So what does McCartney’s move – made public just a week after the Sony/ATV deal – mean for the company that currently owns his Beatles songs? Lennon/McCartney songs represent a lot of earning potential, but their songs are only a drop in the ocean of the estimated 4m compositions Sony/ATV controls. Plus, if McCartney is successful, this will only affect, for now, his share of 32 co-writes in the US alone. Sony will still control Lennon’s share after brokering a deal with Ono in 2009 and will continue to control the rights to all Lennon/McCartney songs outside the US.
If not quite revenge, then McCartney’s move here is at least an attempt to right his past wrongs and make peace with something that has been eating away at him for half a century. He has always had a complex relationship with his publishing and the legacy of the band. Aside from twice losing the chance to buy his rights, in 2002 he listed Beatles songs on his Back in the US live album as being written by McCartney/Lennon and not the other way round, as they had been traditionally credited. “I think it’s fair and accurate for the songs that John declared were mine to carry my name first,” he said at the time. The following year, a new version of the Let It Be album was released under the title of Let It Be … Naked in which McCartney stripped everything producer Phil Spector did on it, because he had always been unhappy with the album that had been released.
It could be argued that, inch by inch, McCartney has been rewriting Beatles history. Until now, it has mainly been about the creative side of things, but this is one of the biggest financial recalibrations he has undertaken. Whether or not it will salve the pain and frustration of a half-century of bad deals for McCartney is debatable, but its power to add to his and his third wife Nancy Shevell’s estimated net worth of £730m is unarguable. Thanks for reading.
Co Donegal pier accident: victim told rescuer to ‘save the baby’
A man who rescued a four-month-old baby from a car that was sinking into the sea in County Donegal, Ireland, has described how the father of the infant passed her to him through a broken side window, told him to “save the baby” and then attempted to rescue the rest of his family.
Davitt Walsh from Donegal, who swam out to the car, said the father, Sean McGrotty, had given the baby to him then gone back into the vehicle to try to get the others out. McGrotty died, along with four other members of his family.
Speaking to RTE News last night, Walsh said: “It was terrible. I was out there. I was swimming. I didn’t know how I was going to help or what was going to happen. The baby was handed to me.
“When it happened, the father looked at me and he had to make a decision. He could have saved himself because he was out of the car. But he went back into his family. I couldn’t do nothing else. The car went down instantly.
“The younger child was trying to get out the back. The father knew deep down – he knew I was only going to be able to save one person. The thing he said, he handed it to me and said: ‘Save the baby.’ He went back and stayed with his family and the car just disappeared.”
The child, Rionaghac-Ann, was taken to Letterkenny general hospital in Donegal where she was said to be “doing well”.
Louise McGrotty, from Derry, Northern Ireland, was at a hen party in Liverpool when her husband, Sean, sons Mark, 12, and Evan, eight, her 59-year-old mother, Ruth Daniels, and her sister Jodie Lee Daniels, 14, drowned after the Audi Q7 they were travelling in slipped off the pier at Buncrana at about 7.30pm on Sunday.
Five members of family who died in Co Donegal pier accident are named
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Irish police are investigating whether the driver lost control of the four-wheel-drive car after it slipped on a thick buildup of algae towards the end of the pier.
Sean McGrotty’s brother Jim said an “unspeakable tragedy” had been visited upon his family. “I was sitting at home when news of the tragedy started to emerge last night. My thoughts were for the families of those involved. Little did I realise then that it was my own family members who had died.”
He singled out Walsh, saying: “On behalf of the family, we want to thank that brave man who swam into the sea and who saved the life of Louise’s baby Rionaghac-Ann. We have since found out that Rionaghac-Ann’s father Sean handed his baby daughter out of the window of the car into the arms of the brave man who dived in to help just seconds before the car sank with the other family members inside it.”
Describing his brother as totally devoted to his family, Jim McGrotty added: “There has been a constant stream of callers arriving at the house since word of who was involved has become public. On behalf of the family, we wish to thank those people for their support and for their love at this very difficult time for us all.
“Words cannot express the enormity of the tragedy which has befallen our family. We are all numbed by this tragedy which has visited us. If there is anything good which has come out of it is the fact that baby Rionaghac-Ann has been saved.”
The slipway on the Buncrana pier in a Google street view image, dated September 2009, with algae growing on the surface.
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The slipway on the Buncrana pier in a Google street view image, dated September 2009, with algae growing on the surface. Photograph: Google Maps
Among those who called on the McGrotty family yesterday was Martin McGuinness, the Derry-born deputy first minister of Northern Ireland.
“I have just come from meeting a young woman who has lost her partner, her two sons, her mother and her sister and it is a very, very sad house. Truly heartbreaking, mind-numbing and shocking beyond belief,” McGuinness said.
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A witness in Buncrana, Francis Crawford, told Radio Foyle in Derry of the harrowing scenes around the pier. “I could hear them, the children in the car, as water started to come and that’s heart-rending in itself … Totally distressing and that will stay with me for a long time.
“I was standing there in a totally hopeless and helpless position waiting on help arriving. It was hopeless, you need a boat there right away. By the time the boat arrived, there were already bodies in the water and they tried to resuscitate them but it was hopeless,” Crawford said.
He also praised Walsh, saying: “Great that he did, he came back with a wee baby. I didn’t know how he got it, he said it was handed out of the window to him. He was shouting: ‘Grab the baby, grab the baby’. He was totally exhausted, I’d say if there was another five yards he wouldn’t have made it. He was taken to hospital then with cuts and different things, so heroic,” Crawford added.
John Carter, of the RNLI, said he had never witnessed anything of this magnitude on Lough Swilly before. “It is a very distressing thing to deal with any kind of tragedy, but particularly when children are involved,” he said.
Father Paddy O’Kane, the parish priest in the McGrottys’ home area of Ballymagroarty in Derry, also visited the family home on Monday.
“The grief of the family cannot be measured. There is a numbness and stillness in the family home and my thoughts and prayers and the thoughts and prayers of the entire parish and further afield with those bereaved,” O’Kane said.
One of the boys who died, Evan, had Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a muscle-weakening disease that starts in early childhood and for which there is no cure. He was with the Make-A-Wish Foundation charity which helps children with terminal illnesses and their families. Neighbours of the family said Evan’s condition was a life-limiting illness and his mother had been constantly raising money for the charity.
All five of the victims will be buried on Thursday at 2pm in the Holy Family church in Derry. The mayor of Derry and Strabane district council have opened a book of condolences in the city to allow the public to express their thoughts on the tragedy. Thanks for reading
Disability benefits U-turn leaves Cameron with £4.4bn to find
David Cameron has been forced to concede that a £4.4bn black hole created by the U-turn over disability benefits will not be filled by further cuts to welfare as he fought to shore up his credibility following the shock resignation of Iain Duncan Smith.
The spending climbdown was announced on Monday by Stephen Crabb, the new work and pensions secretary, an hour after Cameron addressed the political crisis engulfing the Conservative party by offering his support to George Osborne and praise for the work of Duncan Smith.
Aiming to strike a conciliatory tone in the Commons, Cameron said Duncan Smith had “contributed an enormous amount to the work of this government” in his work campaigning for welfare reform, which he said had reduced child and pensioner poverty and inequality.
He added that “none of this would be possible if it weren’t for the actions” of his friend Osborne, although the chancellor was not present in the house. Labour MPs repeatedly asked why he had failed to turn up in the House of Commons to sit alongside the prime minister.
In the debate on the budget that followed Cameron’s remarks, Crabb said his department would drop controversial reforms to personal independence payments (PIP), a disability benefit, adding: “We have no further plans to make welfare savings beyond the very substantial savings legislated for by parliament two weeks ago”.
The statement appeared to indicate that the government was ruling out cuts to the welfare budget for the rest of the parliament, but the government clarified the remarks by stressing that there were no plans to fill the £4.4bn gap caused by dropping PIP reforms with further cuts in welfare spending.
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Government rules out any further cuts to welfare – video
Crabb also revealed that the government would review the level of its welfare cap in the autumn statement. But he added that “it is right that we monitor welfare spending carefully”, arguing that the principle of having “discipline” through a cap was right.
The beleaguered Osborne is due to appear in parliament on Tuesday to defend his work by taking the unusual step of speaking in the debate following last week’s controversial budget, which caused anger on his own backbenches and culminated in the resignation of Duncan Smith.
The former work and pensions secretary had accused Osborne and Cameron of protecting wealthy Tory voting pensioners at the expense of the working poor, while a number of backbench MPs were openly attacking his chancellorship.
Adding to the pressure on Osborne, Boris Johnson, now the frontrunner to become the next Conservative leader, told ITV’s Agenda he believed that the cuts to PIP were a mistake. He added: “I think I have already said very clearly that the government has decided collectively and quite rightly to take the PIP aspect of it [the budget] and try to sort it out.”
Osborne will hit back, and is due to tell MPs: “It is a budget of a compassionate, one-nation Conservative government determined to deliver both social justice and economic security. It’s a budget that puts the next generation first.”
He will also address Duncan Smith directly, claiming that he is sorry he chose to leave government. “[I] want to recognise his achievements in helping to make sure work pays, breaking the old cycles of welfare dependency and ensuring the most vulnerable in our society are protected,” he will say.
Bookmakers further lengthened Osborne’s chances of becoming Tory leader, with new odds being offered on how long he will last as chancellor.
David Davis, the senior Tory MP who ran against Cameron for the leadership in 2005, said Osborne’s hopes of becoming leader of the Conservatives if the prime minister quits in the near future have “sunk without a trace”.
How convincing was David Cameron’s Commons statement?
Rafael Behr, Anne Perkins, Simon Jenkins and Martin Kettle
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The Tory MP Karen Lumley released a letter that she and colleagues had sent to Osborne before the budget claiming the PIP cuts gave the impression of a “sustained attack on disabled benefits by the government” and could cause long-term damage to its reputation.
While the issue under debate is austerity and whether the government has gone too far in cutting benefits for the poor, the febrile mood on the Tory backbenches has been driven by the fight over Britain’s place in the EU, which is causing the biggest split in the party for two decades.
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One cabinet minister told the Guardian that embarking on the referendum was like “pouring petrol” over the party and causing it to “go up in flames”. The minister said that some MPs simple “don’t like the prime minister and never will like him regardless of if he wins elections”.
The minister admitted that some politicians in the party wanted to launch a coup against Cameron on 24 June, the day after the referendum. They – and other MPs – said the most dangerous outcome for the prime minister would be a narrow victory for the Remain camp, which could make Brexit supporters feel “like we were robbed”.
Graham Brady, chair of the 1922 committee of Conservative backbenchers to whom MPs would write if they wanted to trigger a vote of no confidence in Cameron, called for calm. “We know that there are strong passions on both sides of the European debate and it is inevitable there will be tensions and at time the temperature may rise,” he told the Guardian.
“But it is important for the good of the party and credibility of the government that colleagues are careful to be respectful and courteous.” Thanks for reading.
NYSC Confirms Killing Of Corps Member In Rivers Re-Run Elections
The Management of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) has confirmed the death of a corps member, Okonta Dumebi Samuel with call-up number RV/15B/5539.
Reports gathered that Samuel who served at GCSS Ukpeliede was shot dead by unknown gunmen in Ahoada West Local Government Area during the Rivers State re-run elections on Saturday.
The NYSC in a statement issued in Abuja by the Director Public Relations, Abosede Aderibigbe said the murder of the corps member should be strongly condemned by all well-meaning Nigerians. “The murder of this patriotic young man, who was an orphan, is primitive, barbaric, and ungodly; and should be strongly condemned by all well-meaning Nigerians.
“The NYSC shall work with relevant agencies to ensure that the perpetrators of this heinous act are fished out and made to face the full wrath of the law.
“We consider Okonta Samuel’s death as a great loss, not only to his immediate family, but also to all of us in the NYSC family and the entire nation. The service then prayed for the repose of his soul and for the family to have the fortitude to bear the loss.
AMAA 2016 set To Hold In Lagos In April
The 2016 edition of the African Movie Academy Awards, AMAA is set to take place on Saturday, April 30.
The event, which is reputed to be one of the biggest movie award on the African continent, will be holding its 12th edition since it was founded in 2005.
This year’s AMAA will be preceded by a nominee unveiling in Dubai, UAE later this month as the awards seek to get more global partnership with prospective investors.
AMAA
The 2015 edition of the award was held in Port Elizabeth, South Africa on Saturday, September 26, 2015 with top industry players turning up.
Thanks for reading.
FBI may have found way to unlock San Bernardino iPhone without Apple
A court hearing designed to force Apple into compromising its security systems for the iPhone was cancelled Monday at the request of federal authorities, who said they potentially had another way into the San Bernardino shooter’s phone.
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An Apple loss in the San Bernardino encryption case risks creating a world in which we can no longer trust the gadgets that track how we drive, when we’re home and whether the door is locked
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The astonishing reversal kicks the can down the road in what had become the climax of a two year battle over digital privacy between the US government and Silicon Valley. At the same time, the standoff between Apple and the Justice Department drew so much attention that policymakers or another court may weigh in soon regardless.
The government has until 5 April to determine whether it wants to pursue the case. Apple’s attorneys, in a conference call with reporters, said they do not consider the development a legal victory and warned they could be back in the same situation in two weeks. The attorneys spoke on the condition of not being quoted by name.
The company’s lawyers said they were as surprised as anyone and learned of the development in an afternoon phone call.
The government’s potential solution raises its own questions: if investigators figure out a way to hack into the device without Apple’s help, are they obligated to show Apple the security flaw they used to get inside? Attorneys for Apple, which almost assuredly would then patch such a flaw, said they would demand the government share their methods if they successfully get inside the phone.
On Monday evening, US magistrate judge Sheri Pym stayed her previous order that Apple help the government crack the passcode on the iPhone used by San Bernardino gunman Syed Farook, citing “uncertainty” on the part of the government.
In its filing, the justice department said it might have a different way to break into device – something cryptographers, leading data security experts and even Edward Snowden have said was possible without placing the cybersecurity of all iPhone users at risk through creating what Apple derisively calls “GovtOS”.
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Nevertheless, the government has stated repeatedly, under oath, that Apple alone had the technical ability to get inside the device. The government wanted Apple to use an official Apple software update to turn off some security features, including one that can cause the phone to wipe its storage if someone enters the wrong passcode 10 times.
The justice department request comes after more than a month of heated insistence that the only way the FBI could examine a locked iPhone used by the gunam was for Apple to write new software that would be missing some of its operating system’s security features.
US investigators said they have continued to look for new ways into the iPhone 5C used by Farook since the justice department took Apple to court. In 2014, Apple updated its iPhone software such that it could no longer download data from locked devices without the user’s passcode, which Apple does not know.
The White House, which has stood by the justice department in its feud with Apple, did not immediately comment on the reversal.
The FBI has been viewing security as an impedance rather than a necessity
Susan Landau
The forensic standstill caused many to question the FBI’s technical chops.
A law enforcement official who would not agree to be quoted by name said that the FBI was approached by an “outside party” unaffiliated with the government on Sunday who offered a prospective path into the phone that would not require Apple’s assistance. The official refused to identify the party, and said that many outside government had approached the FBI seeking to lend technical expertise.
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The government said it would like to test the method and then file a report with the court.
Susan Landau, a cybersecurity expert who in a recent congressional hearing lambasted the FBI for its poor understanding of digital forensics, told the Guardian that she “certainly” felt that the unexpected development demonstrated her point. Landau also said she was not the “outside party” who provided the potential breakthrough.
“The FBI has been viewing security as an impedance rather than a necessity. That the Bureau may not need Apple’s help to access the phone points up what’s been true in this case all along: the FBI needs to strengthen its own technological capabilities,” said Landau, a professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts.
The law enforcement official did not answer the Guardian’s question about what the apparently unsolicited outside guidance indicates about the FBI’s competence in digital investigations. James Comey, the FBI director who has made law enforcement access to encrypted communications a national issue, told Congress that sometimes the FBI does not have technical expertise to match its pop-culture portrayal as high-tech wizards.
FBI Director James Comey testifies before the House Judiciary Committee hearing on ‘The Encryption Tightrope: Balancing Americans’ Security and Privacy’, on 1 March 2016.
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FBI Director James Comey testifies before the House Judiciary Committee hearing on ‘The Encryption Tightrope: Balancing Americans’ Security and Privacy’, on 1 March 2016. Photograph: Shawn Thew/EPA
Although the justice department had told the court that Apple had the “exclusive technical means” to provide the FBI with access to the locked phone, a second law enforcement official, who also would not be named, insisted the sudden breakthrough did not contradict the government’s earlier assurances.
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“The arguments in our pleading were that we needed Apple’s assistance as a last resort, as the FBI’s efforts to date had not been successful”, the official said. The official would not say if the “outside party” was solicited by the government or offered an unsolicited technical suggestion.
But attorney Alex Abdo of the American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a brief supporting Apple, lambasted the government’s reversal.
“This suggests that the FBI either doesn’t understand the technology well enough or wasn’t telling us the full truth earlier when it said that only Apple could break into the phone. Either possibility is disconcerting.”
On the one hand, the delay short-circuits a massive privacy battle between America’s most valuable company and its government that had been building for two years. National media were already descending Monday on southern California for the hearing in the federal courthouse in Riverside.
On the other, the government’s reversal seems to only postpone the inevitable. Both US officials and technology executives have said that if the San Bernardino case had not brought the two sides into court, another one surely would.
Melanie Newman, a justice department spokeswoman, said the department was “cautiously optimistic” that the proposed new investigative tactic would work, but testing was required.
“If this solution works, it will allow us to search the phone and continue our investigation into the terrorist attack that killed 14 people and wounded 22 people,” Newman said in a statement.
Yet the FBI is, for now, spared a showdown with Apple that saw an unprecedented near-unanimity of leading tech firms, more than a dozen of which rallied to Apple’s defense in court. Even the US defense secretary, Ashton Carter, undercut the FBI in public by singing the praises of encryption in a recent San Francisco speech, suggesting a lack of government unity behind the FBI push. Thanks for reading.
