Secret Service lost texts on January 6 in part due to iMessage encryption; this may discourage staff from utilizing iMessage in the future.
The Secret Service has come under fire for missing text texts made about the attack around the time of the Capitol rioting on January 6, 2021, perhaps in violation of federal record preservation rules.
According to the Secret Service, through Politico, one of the reasons this occurred was because the automated backup mechanisms the Secret Service utilized were unable to access iMessages because they are kept on the phone in an encrypted format.
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The Secret Service appeared to have been switching to a new mobile device management and deployment system when the incident occurred. Emails and pictures would be automatically stored and backed up by this system in a single location.
However, iMessage is kept on the device in an encrypted format that prevents the central system from accessing it.
Instead, in order for iMessages to be kept, people would need to remember to manually backup their devices before they reset their phones. All of the agents’ iMessage communications were apparently destroyed when their phones were erased since many of them apparently forgot to do this. (Of course, the political irony is that the agency in charge of conducting intricate forensic investigations into cybercrime cannot be relied upon to maintain its own records accurate.)
To prevent this from happening again, the organization is now thinking about completely blocking iMessage on agents’ smartphones (for context, iMessage is already banned in the White House). The organization is considering more possibilities.
“We want to make sure whatever policy action we take does not adversely impact our protective or investigative missions,” Guglielmi said. He added that the Secret Service is “looking at other technological solutions.” He did not provide further details.
Uncertainty surrounds the extent to which agents communicated about the January 6 riots for work-related purposes using iMessage. It is important to remember, though, that iMessage is not the only element at play. Technical and organizational mistakes may have also resulted in the loss of standard SMS text messages.
