Department of Justice (2)
Apple handed over user data to the FBI that helped secure the arrest of a Black Lives Matter protester suspected of firebombing cop cars, according to a report.
The tech giant responded to a request from the feds for the iCloud information of the suspect, Kelly Jackson, by turning over his iPhone photos stored on the server, Forbes reported.
Jackson, 20, was busted last week on charges for trying to set two police vehicles on fire during a May 30 protest in Seattle, federal prosecutors said.
The FBI had been tipped off to his identity then obtained Verizon records that revealed his location during the protests, as well as that he was using an iPhone 7, according to a search warrant obtained by the magazine.
Federal agents then contacted Apple and were given screenshots hosted in his photo library, which included an image of an Instagram post promoting the protest as “The Defiant Walk of Resistance Against Injustice,” the outlet reported.
There was also a screenshot from a site with a list of “ingredients” for a Molotov cocktail, the report said.
Apple didn’t respond to request for comment, the outlet reported.
The company has previously complied with requests from the government for user information, In the second half of 2019, the company returned 3,645 of the 4,095 requests on user accounts, according to its own report.
*story by The New York Post