Amazon, Facebook, Google and Microsoft pledge support for Apple

In a 65-page federal court filing on Thursday in Riverside, Calif., Apple said making it override the encryption of an iPhone belonging to one of the San Bernardino shooters was wild overreach. It was not immediately clear whether the companies would file a joint amicus brief or whether some would file individually.

A Twitter spokesperson also confirmed to NBC News that that company expects “to be on a brief supporting Apple,” but declined to say whether that filing would be alone or in conjunction with other companies.

Microsoft agrees and, according to Bloomberg, will back Apple with an “amicus brief” next week.

Rumors indicate Facebook and Google – all of which have showed their public support for Apple – will collectively file the same brief with Microsoft and Twitter.

Tech companies aren’t exactly known for playing nice with one another.

Forcing Apple to manufacture new security vulnerabilities into its phones’ operating system in order to give the government access paves the way for these kinds of breaches to become all the more common.

Even if those software engineers were some of the highest-paid ones at Apple, the whole hacking project would still cost less than $200,000 – a minute glitch for a company with $216 billion in cash. Apple added that the order had broad implications that would “inflict significant harm – to civil liberties, society and national security – and would pre-empt decisions that should be left to the will of the people through laws passed by Congress and signed by the president”. In Apple CEO Tim Cook’s open letter, he writes, “We have great respect for the professionals at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and we believe their intentions are good”.

Bill Gates may be on the FBI’s side in the San Bernardino iPhone case, but the company he co-founded has joined other tech giants in backing Apple. Verizon CEO – Lowell McAdam – said that his firm “is committed to protecting customer privacy and one of the tools for protecting that privacy is encryption”.

The problem with the case, Lessig said, is that Apple is going to have to do a lot of work to convince the court that there’s a new issue here. But Apple supporters say that the government’s interest in this specific case is less than the “compelling” standard, and does not outweigh the standing and value of Apple’s promise to consumers of privacy for their data. But a company also shouldn’t be forced to deliberately weaken the integrity of their own products and subject millions of customers to security vulnerabilities in order to do so.

Given Apple’s penchant for secrecy, having its development processes in the public record is a undesirable possibility.

It is not just about dollars and cents, particularly when the US government has already offered to repay Apple for every penny spent. And with ready access to phone Global Positioning System tracking information, authorities here – or repressive regimes overseas – seeking to track down dissidents and reporters’ sources can gather unprecedented amounts of specific information on where someone is at all times and with whom they are meeting.

“This is pushing the law to a new frontier”, Zwillinger told U.S. Magistrate Judge James Orenstein during the fall hearing. There is a possible Second Amendment claim that Apple’s security measures serve as a check on government power, in the same way gun ownership might, and a 14th Amendment claim likening the government’s demand to slavery, if it requires unpaid programming labor.