Donald Trump: Boycott Apple Until They Help FBI Access Shooter’s Phone

While it’s not impossible to create special software to unlock the iPhone, it would be an undue burden, the Apple official said.

The Order requires Apple to assist the Federal Bureau of Investigation with respect to this single iPhone used by Farook by providing the Federal Bureau of Investigation with the opportunity to determine the passcode.

“There is a real downside of Apple losing”, said Andrew Crocker, staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

“The FBI worked with San Bernardino County to reset the iCloud password on December 6th, as the county owned the account and was able to reset the password in order to provide immediate access to the iCloud backup data”, the agency said Saturday night.

But one of the most encouraging options was ruled out after the phone’s owner – Farook’s employer, the San Bernardino County Public Health Department – reset the password to his iCloud account in order to access data from the backup, according to Apple officials.

“Apple appears to object [to the court order] based on a combination of: a perceived negative impact on its reputation and marketing strategy were it to provide the ordered assistance to the government, numerous mischaracterizations of the requirements of the Order, and an incorrect understanding of the All Writs Act”.

This battle is heading for a showdown this coming week, with Apple expected to respond to a court order compelling it to help the government.

A hearing about the dispute will take place in a Californian court on 22 March.

This fight is a rare chance to see the mighty US government grapple with a tech titan. Baikalov said the San Bernardino case is a no-brainer – but when you consider the long line of inquiries lined up after this case claiming similar urgency, two hard questions arise: Where do you draw the line; and who draws it?

In the Friday filing, prosecutors acknowledged that the iCloud passcode was reset in the hours immediately following the attack by authorities for San Bernardino County, the phone’s owner of record.

The strongly worded motion, filed in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, responds at length to a statement issued earlier this week by Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, in which the company argued it had a duty to protect the privacy of its customers. The FBI wants Apple to remove a feature that erases the information stored on an iPhone after 10 unsuccessful attempts to enter a password, preventing unauthorized users from accessing the device.

The motion to compel Apple’s compliance said technology providers in the past have been required to “write some amount of code to gather information in response to subpoenas”. In their filing Friday, prosecutors explained that investigators would be willing to work remotely to test passcodes, while Apple retained both possession of the phone and the technology itself.

“They don’t want to open up the phones”.