Encryption & Key Management , Security Operations

FBI Is Frustrated Over Encryption in Trump Shooting Probe

Encrypted messaging apps continue to stymie a federal probe into the smartphone of the shooter who attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump, FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate testified Tuesday.

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Why Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, went to the top of a warehouse overlooking an outdoor rally for the Republican presidential nominee in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13 is unknown. Seventeen days later, Abbate testified at a joint Senate hearing that law enforcement has "not been able to get information back" from several apps the shooter used "because of their encrypted nature."

"We need a solution that provides lawful access for law enforcement," Abbate repeatedly asserted while testifying before the Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security committees.

Law enforcement has long voiced its frustration over the unbreakable end-to-end encryption deployed onto consumer services such as chat apps - a stance that has persisted over multiple presidential administrations of both parties. Tech giants and privacy advocates have been unsympathetic, pointing to multiple new ways that technology has created to surveil individuals. They've also said that the privacy created by encryption is a necessary prerequisite for trusting online services, which intermediate everything from intimate conversations to financial transactions.

The FBI initially failed to unlock Thomas Crook's Samsung device at its Pittsburgh field office but eventually used a tool developed by the Israeli-based mobile forensics firm Cellebrite at its laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, to gain access to the phone.

FBI Director Christophe Wray previously told the House Committee on the Judiciary the bureau was "still exploiting a number of the digital devices" Crooks may have used throughout his assassination attempt on Trump, and that the FBI had faced a number of challenges accessing his phone "from an encryption perspective" (see: FBI Encountered Encryption Hurdles in Trump Shooting Probe).

Abbate said the investigation has begun to yield "legal returns" from social media accounts that may indicate Crooks espoused antisemitic and anti-immigration themes online sometime between 2019 and 2020 and that the investigative team is still working to verify the account belonged to Crooks. Abbate said it was important to share, "particularly given the general absence of other information to date from social media and other sources of information that reflect on the shooter's potential motive and mindset."

It remains unclear which messaging platforms the shooter used prior to the assassination attempt and what the messages stored on those platforms could reveal about his mindset. Previous analysis of the digital evidence that investigators were able to retrieve showed that the shooter researched Lee Harvey Oswald's assassination of former President John F. Kennedy and at one point searched: "How far away was Oswald from Kennedy?"