As you might have heard, Apple had refused to oblige the FBI in trying to unlock the iPhone belonging to one of the terrorists in the San Bernardino shootings. The FBI eventually found a way around this by seeking outside help, although unfortunately it seems that so far, they have not found anything useful.
We suppose this was the risk that they had to take since they had no idea what to expect, but it turns out that this proved to be a very costly risk. According to a calculation done by Reuters, they have estimated that the FBI might have spent $1.3 million trying to unlock the device. Note that this isn’t an official figure, but it was implied based on comments made by FBI Director James Comey.
According to Comey’s comment when asked how much the FBI paid to unlock the iPhone, Comey said, “A lot. More than I will make in the remainder of this job, which is seven years and four months for sure, but it was, in my view, worth it.” Reuters based on their calculation on that statement and based on Comey’s annual salary and how long left he would have left in his position, it came up to $1.34 million.
Assuming this is accurate, it is a lot of money to spend to unlock an iPhone that had nothing useful on it. In fact the technique they used to unlock the phone can only be applied to the iPhone 5s. However we suppose the fact that it is possible to unlock the iPhone could be what Comey was talking about when he said it was worth it.