Authorities obtain warrant for Texas church shooter's iPhone

Authorities are continuing to investigate the mass shooting that left 26 people dead and 20 others wounded when a gunman opened fire inside a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, two weeks ago.

Now, the San Antonio Express-Newsreports that Texas rangers have served Apple warrants for files stored on the shooter's iPhone and his iCloud account. They've also obtained a warrant for files stored on a second mobile phone (made by LG) that was found at the scene of the shooting.

Apple's own legal process guidelines for iCloud state that the company will provide material to law enforcement agencies when it's requested using a search warrant. But the company notably has a much different set of policies concerning files on a person's encrypted iPhone.

In 2015, Apple was involved in a public clash with the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI when government officials were unable to obtain files on the San Bernardino mass shooter's encrypted iPhone. The FBI tried to force Apple to create software that would unlock the San Bernardino shooter's iPhone. Apple CEO Tim Cook accused the government of asking his company to engineer the “software equivalent of cancer."

Eventually, a court dispute between the government and Apple was resolved when the FBI found a way to access the phone using a third party. The FBI reportedly paid under $1 million to unlock the iPhone.

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Last week, FBI special agent Christopher Combs alluded to the ongoing dispute between the DOJ and Apple during a press conference and placed at least some blame on the tech giant. “We are unable to get into that phone,” Combs said during a news conference. "Law enforcement on the state and the federal level is increasingly not able to get into the phones.”

Investigators are requesting access to the shooter's iCloud account to search though messages, calls, social media, photos, videos, and essentially all other data since Jan. 1.

"Our team immediately reached out to the FBI after learning from their press conference on [Nov. 7] that investigators were trying to access a mobile phone. We offered assistance and said we would expedite our response to any legal process they send us," Apple said in a statement sent to Mashable.

It's still unclear exactly how law enforcement plans to gain access to files stores on the shooter's encrypted iPhone and whether Apple will be willing to help unlock the phone using a software key as was requested in the 2015 San Bernardino case.

Mashablehas reached out to Apple, the FBI, and the Texas Department of Public Safety. We'll update this story when we hear back.

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