Jim Baker, the FBI’s general counsel, has revealed the law enforcement agency is able to access data stored in some mobile devices and computers during the course of an investigation, Motherboard reported Friday.
Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai writes Baker told a public meeting on encryption in Washington D.C. that the FBI came across security codes in 2,095 out of 6,814 mobile devices examined by the bureau’s forensic laboratory between Oct. 1, 2015 and Sept. 30, 2016.
The report said federal investigators managed to unlock 1,210 of the 2,095 locked devices they encountered during the same period.
Kevin Bankston, the director of the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute, told Motherboard that these figures suggest encryption poses a problem in a few criminal investigation cases even if the system is activated on mobile devices by default.
