Secret Service May Restrict iMessage Access After Jan. 6 Text Deletions
Apple likes to tout the security of iMessage, but it may be a bit too secure for the Secret Service.
The agency deleted text messages on government employees’ work-issued phones on Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, 2021, the day before and the day of the insurrection at the US Capitol. In a July 2022 statement(Opens in a new window), Anthony Guglielmi, Chief of Communications for the Secret Service, said it "reset its mobile phones to factory settings as part of a pre-planned, three-month system migration" before the Department of Homeland Security and lawmakers requested any information. "In that process, data resident on some phones was lost."
That didn't sit well with lawmakers investigating the attack. As a result, the agency may restrict employees from using iMessage on work-issued phones to prevent such a loss of critical evidence in the future, Politico reports(Opens in a new window).
“This is actually something we are looking at very closely,” Guglielmi tells Politico. “Director James Murray has ordered a benchmarking study to further examine the feasibility of disabling iMessage and whether it could have any operational impacts.”
The January 6th Committee(Opens in a new window) subpoenaed the Secret Service on July 15, 2022. The document(Opens in a new window) asks the agency to produce all communications – including text messages – “between January 5, 2021 and January 7, 2021...relating to the events of January 6, 2021.”
On July 19, the Secret Service responded(Opens in a new window) to the committee by providing thousands of records – but not the deleted text messages. The agency said it was taking steps to recover the messages.
Unlike regular text messages sent over SMS, iMessages go through multiple encryption steps(Opens
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