Indian forensic agency will soon get the technology to unlock any mobile phone

According to a report by The Economic Times, Indian law enforcement agencies will soon acquire the technology to unlock hard-to-crack iPhones and other devices with ‘top-notch encryption’.

The Forensic Science Laboratory (FSL) in Gandhinagar, the country’s premier forensic facility, will be buying the technology from Cellebrite, the Israeli company that manufactures data extraction, transfer, and analysis devices for mobile devices. Cellebrite Mobile Synchronization, a subsidiary of Japan’s Sun Corporation, was recently in news for unblocking iPhone of one of the suspected perpetrators of a mass shooting in San Bernardino last December for Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for over a million dollars.

The report cites anonymous officials that FSL is in negotiations with the company to obtain the high-end decryption technology within a month or so. The lab has in the past sought help from the firm on per-case basis, but are now looking at acquiring the ‘entire tool’.

Cellebrite has worked with several intelligence and law enforcement agencies around the world and India’s forensic facility will now aim to become the global go-to place for such services.