Two years ago, the FBI published its official advice to "protect your mobile device," including a recommendation to encrypt your storage. This year, the FBI is suing Apple to force it to break its encryption.
In between, the FBI mysteriously removed this advice.
Techdirt's Mike Masnick filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the FBI to find out how it decided to change its recommendation. The FBI scoured every corner — it took more than the 30 days the law allows! — and told Masnick, sorry, we don't have any records of that one. Shruggie!
It is, of course, entirely possible that my request was not clear enough — though I specifically pointed them to where the URL used to be and what was on it. So I'm not entirely sure what other information to provide in response. And that's part of the problem with the FOIA process. It's something of a guessing game, where if you don't guess exactly the proper way to phrase what you want, they'll just come back with a no responsive documents response. Of course, perhaps they just encrypted the information on an iPhone and they won't be able to get it for me unless they win their fight against Apple… right?
FBI Claims It Has No Record Of Why It Deleted Its Recommendation To Encrypt Phones
[Mike Masnick/Techdirt]
