At a press conversation, Christopher Combs, the FBI designated agent in charge of the research, said the phone had been moved back to the FBI in Quantico, Virginia for review. Investigators have identified Devin Patrick Kelley as the criminal in the shooting, which opened in the town of Sutherland Springs.
“Unfortunately, at this point in time, we are powerless to get into that phone,” Combs said.
The criticisms echo other high-profile events where the FBI said it was formed from accessing a phone because of encryption technology used in Phone. Most memorably, the FBI and Apple went to court last year in a superior legal dispute over whether the business could be forced to help law execution access a phone used by the shooter in the 2015 San Bernardino attack.
Combs explicitly drew the contact between the Texas shooter’s encrypted device and those employed by others. “It highlights an issue that you’ve all caught about before, with the advance of the technology and the phones and the encryptions, law implementation, whether that’s at the state, local or federal level, is frequently not able to get into these phones,” he said.
Combs said he would not specify which phone was used because he did not want to “tell all bad guy out there what smartphone to buy.”
