FBI Utilizes Israeli Tech to Crack Phone of Trump’s Attempted Assassin
The 25-year-old company is used by over 2,500 North American federal, state, and local agencies.
By Batya Jerenberg
The FBI used Israeli technology to hack into the cellphone of would-be Donald Trump assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks, the Washington Post reported Tuesday.
After Crooks shot and killed one man and injured three, including grazing the former president’s ear, during a Saturday outdoor campaign rally, a Secret Service sniper shot him dead.
The report cited unnamed people involved in the investigation as saying that when a cellphone was found on the body it was taken to the nearby Pittsburgh FBI office, where the agents couldn’t break into it.
On Sunday, the report said, the phone was sent to the FBI lab in Quantico, Va., where the investigators used software invented by Israeli company Cellebrite, to hack into the device in less than 40 minutes.
It can often take from hours to weeks to break into a suspected criminal’s phone.
Cellebrite, which is headquartered in Petach Tikva and traded on the NASDAQ, has a platform that can access, extract, and decode data from computer devices to reveal evidence as well as analyze it.
The company also uses its proprietary software to keep sensitive information safe.
The 25-year-old company is used by over 2,500 North American federal, state and local agencies, the police departments of the 20 largest American cities, and 25 national police departments in the European Union.
In this case, the information that was revealed gave the investigators some leads to examine, but did not discover any motives for Crooks’ attempt to kill the Republican nominee for president.
The investigation into Crooks’ recent past is continuing as the FBI searches for a reason why the 20-year-old climbed onto a roof about 150 yards away from the stage Trump was speaking from and loosed off some eight shots before being gunned down by the nominee’s protective unit.
Former high school classmates have told various news agencies that Crooks was a loner who was “relentlessly” bullied.
He was teased for having bad body odor and was nicknamed “the school
shooter” already as a freshman.
He was also rejected from the school’s rifle club for allegedly being a “comically bad” shot.
Crooks’ guidance counselor for three years, Jim Knapp, however, denied that the 20-year-old had been harassed in high school. He described Crooks as “quiet,” “intelligent,” and “well-spoken,” who had a group of about five friends that he often hung out with.
A neighbor, Kelly Little, told the Washington paper that Crooks was “A normal kid for this neighborhood. A quiet, dorky kid,” who would smile and wave to her when she saw him often walking down the street.
Cellebrite received bad press in 2020-2021 for allegedly selling its services to repressive regimes such as Russia, Saudi Arabia and China, where the latter’s Hong Kong police reportedly used Cellebrite to unlock phones of detained protestors.
It has since declared that the company does not sell to countries sanctioned by the U.S., EU, UK or Israeli governments or that are on the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) blacklist.
“We pursue only those customers who we believe will act lawfully and not in a manner incompatible with privacy rights or human rights,” its website states.
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