Father Requests Tim Cook to Unlock his Dead Son’s iPhone

Leonardo Fabbretti, an architect and a grieving father in Italy, has requested Apple in a direct letter to CEO Tim Cook, to unlock his dead son’s iPhone so that he can retrieve the photographs stored on it (via The Guardian). His son Dama (pictured below) was adopted from Ethiopia in 2007, and was diagnosed with bone cancer in 2013 after a skiing accident. He passed away in September aged 13 after a series of failed operations and chemotherapy sessions.

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Fabbretti has said that if Apple fails to do so, he would then turn to the Israeli mobile forensics firm that reportedly helped the FBI crack the iPhone used by gunman Syed Farook in the San Bernardino terrorist attack. “Don’t deny me the memories of my son,” architect Fabbretti wrote. “I cannot give up. Having lost my Dama, I will fight to have the last two months of photos, thoughts and words which are held hostage in his phone,” he said in the letter, sent on 21 March.

“I think what’s happened should make you think about the privacy policy adopted by your company. Although I share your philosophy in general, I think Apple should offer solutions for exceptional cases like mine.” Fabbretti said he had given his son an iPhone 6 nearly nine months before his death, which he used all the time. “He wanted me to have access, he added my fingerprint ID,” he told AFP. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t work if the phone is turned off and on again.”

Fabbretti also said that Israeli mobile forensics firm Cellebrite had offered to try to open Dama’s phone free of charge.

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