Toronto Police Requested Apple’s Help Into Mayor Rob Ford Investigation

Image via Lucas Oleniuk/Toronto Star via Getty Images

The Globe and Mail reports Toronto Police, as part of their investigation into Mayor Rob Ford and his friend Alessandro (Sandro) Lisi., applied for search warrants into numerous cellphones, which included an iPhone belonging to the latter, as revealed in warrant applications obtained by the newspaper.

Toronto Police last October requested an “assistance order” from Apple to get more information from Mr. Lisi’s iPhone:

In addition to the November requests, the list also shows that in October, police sought search warrants for Mr. Lisi’s Range Rover and home as well as his iPhone. And later in the month, police sought an “assistance order” from Apple Inc.

Last November, Apple made public all government information requests received in a move to show customers it is transparent and aims to protect customer data. That report revealed 38 device information requests from Canadian law enforcement agencies, specifying 224 devices. Apple said it only provided some data on 35 devices and overall 92 percent of the time some data was handed over to agencies.

The warrant applications also noted phone record requests were made from Rogers, Telus, Bell and Wind Mobile, with some as recently as mid-January of this year.