SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – Special Agent Jack Bennett was at the FBI’s computer investigation lab in Quantico, Va., on a Sunday in March when an outside company showed the bureau how it could hack into an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters.
The tool would end the FBI’s high-profile fight with Apple over access to the phone, but Bennett said there was no celebration.
“There wasn’t high fives, and there weren’t people singing down the hallways,” he recalled. “It was very much business. ‘OK, let’s move forward to the next steps. Let’s get on the phone. What do we need to do to purchase the tool?'”
The iPhone fight exposed a rift between the FBI and Silicon Valley technology companies over encryption, and sparked a debate about the right balance between privacy and national security. Bennett, 52, was a key figure in that battle as head of the bureau’s digital forensics labs, which extract evidence from computers and other devices and were tasked with accessing the San Bernardino shooter’s phone.
Bennett is now in charge of the agency’s San Francisco division, where he views his role, in part, as trying to bridge the divide between Silicon Valley and the FBI.