2015 San Bernardino Shooting

Submission 19,654

Overview

The 2015 San Bernardino Shooting was a mass shooting that occurred at the Inland Regional Center, a not-for-profit agency providing services to people with developmental disabilities, in San Bernardino, California in early December, 2015.

Background

On December 2nd, 2015, the married couple Syed Rizwan Farook and wife Tashfeen Malik left their six-month-old daughter with Farook's mother before traveling to the Inland Regional Center wearing ski masks, camouflage and armed with two AR-15 rifles and two semi-automatic pistols. The two opened fire on people in attendance of a holiday party for the San Bernardino County Department of Health, killing 14 people and injuring 21 others. The pair fled the scene and were pursued by law enforcement, ending in a shootout on East San Bernardino Boulevard approximately 1.7 miles away. Both suspects were killed and one officer was injured in the conflict.

Notable Developments

Shooters Identified

That evening, police identified the deceased suspects as Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik. Farook was a 28-year-old American citizen and son of Pakistani immigrants and Malik was a 27-year-old woman originally from Pakistan who Farook met during a trip to Saudi Arabia in the spring of 2014. The couple had a six-month-old daughter

Investigation

The motive for the attack is currently under investigation. On December 2nd, rumors circulated that Farook was in attendance of the holiday party prior to the shooting and angrily left before returning with weapons and tactical gear. The following day, the FBI revealed that Farook had been in touch with people being investigated by the agency for international terrorism. Additionally, 12 pipe bombs and tools that could be used to construct various explosives were discovered in Farook's home. Additionally, the weapons used in the firearms used in the shooting had been legally purchased in another state, but had been modified to fire in fully-automatic mode. That day, CNN^[2] reported that Farook had been "radicalized" according to law enforcement officials and that the FBI is was investigating if the incident was intended to be a terror attack.^[4] On December 4th, CNN reported that investigators believed Malik posted a "pledge of allegiance" on Facebook to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi under a pseudonym account during the shooting. Additionally, the article reported that a law enforcement official stated "This is looking more and more like self-radicalization" and that the couple did not appear to be operating under ISIS leadership.

Online Reactions

On December 2nd, the KPCCRadio YouTube channel uploaded video footage of survivors being directed by police officers inside the Inland Regional Center following the shooting (shown below). The following day, Redditor CarlosWeiner submitted the footage to the /r/videos^[3] subreddit, where it gathered upwards of 3,100 votes (83% upvoted) and 620 comments in less than 24 hours.

On Twitter, the misspelled hashtag #SanBernadino began trending worldwide. Additionally, the hashtag "#America_Burning" was tweeted by supporters of ISIS.

On December 3rd, the New York Daily ran the front page headline "God Isn't Fixing This," which featured tweets by Republican politicians mentioning "prayers" for victims of the shooting, referring to the statements as "platitudes" (shown below).

iPhone Unlock Court Order

On February 16th, 2016, a U.S. District Court judge presiding over the case ordered Apple to provide "reasonable technical assistance" to the federal investigators in unlocking the data stored on an iPhone that had been owned by Farook. According to the court ruling, Apple has been ordered to help the FBI with clearing at least two technical obstacles hindering their investigation: disabling the phone's auto-erase function, which activates after 10 consecutive failed attempts at entering the password, and installing a custom-coded version of the iPhone operating system that would allow investigators to bypass the phone's security features electronically. The next morning, Apple CEO Tim Cook released an open letter^[5] titled “A Message to Our Customers,” revealing that the U.S. government demanded the company unlock an iPhone that had been recovered during the San Bernardino shooting investigation. The company also announced its intention to challenge the court ruling, asserting that its compliance would require creating a “backdoor” to circumvent its own security measures, an action that could set a dangerous precedence in cooperation between the government and the information technology sector.

"We can find no precedent for an American company being forced to expose its customers to a greater risk of attack. For years, cryptologists and national security experts have been warning against weakening encryption. Doing so would hurt only the well-meaning and law-abiding citizens who rely on companies like Apple to protect their data."

On February 17th, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump urged Apple to unlock the phone (shown below).

On February 18th, Business Insider^[6] published an article by John McAfee, who offered to decrypt the iPhone free of charge in three weeks to prevent Apple from compromising iPhone devices. In the coming days, several news sites published articles about the government request, including CNN,^[7] Wired,^[8] The Washington Post,^[9] The New York Times,^[10] NBC News^[11] and USA Today.^[12]