AND FOUND NOTHING OF VALUE: FBI paid more than $1.3M to hack terrorist’s iPhone.

The FBI paid private hackers than $1.3 million for custom software allowing investigators to break into the locked iPhone used by a terrorist in last year’s San Bernardino, Calif., attack, Director James Comey indicated on Thursday.

The bureau paid “a lot” of money, Comey said at an Aspen Security Forum event in London on Thursday, without disclosing the specific price tag.

“More than I will make in the remainder of this job, which is seven years and four months, for sure.”

The FBI director is paid $183,300 per year, according to federal salary system records.

Over the course of the remainder of his term, which ends in July of 2023, he will be paid more than $1.3 million.

The payment “was, in my view, worth it” Comey said on Thursday, “because it’s a tool that helps us with [an iPhone] 5c running iOS 9, which is a bit of a corner case.”

The FBI has declined to say who developed a program to bypass security mechanisms on the phone, but The Washington Post has reported that it paid a one-time fee to a company that was not Cellebrite, the Israeli hacking firm initially suspected of coming to the FBI’s assistance.

They probably spent that much on legal fees in the Apple case.