WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI is defending its decision to withhold information on how it unlocked an iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino, California, shooters.
The Justice Department earlier this month released heavily redacted records in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit from The Associated Press and other media organizations.
Among the information withheld were details about how much the FBI paid to a third party to unlock the work phone of Syed Rizwan Farook as well as the identity of that entity.
In a court filing Monday justifying the redactions, the FBI argued that the information it withheld, if released, could be exploited by "hostile entities" who could develop their own "countermeasures" and interfere with the FBI's intelligence gathering.