Google will back Apple in court against the Federal Bureau of Investigation

The Supreme Court has ruled that a court can only issue an order as long as it doesn’t impose an unreasonable burden to the third party – and that is part of Apple’s argument, that it is imposing a huge burden. To show their support for Apple, Microsoft’s president and chief legal officer Brad Smith stated the company will file a brief in a federal court in California next week to back Apple.

Some say Apple’s position is based on a core principle about security of its users’ data.

“Here, by contrast, the government has failed to demonstrate that the requested order was absolutely necessary to effectuate the search warrant, including that it exhausted all other avenues for recovering information”, the motion filed by Apple reads.

Over the course of the ongoing battle between Apple and the government over unlocking the iPhone of the San Bernardino terrorist, Max Levchin – PayPal co-founder and CEO of financial tech company Affirm – said his views have changed from a “clear-cut, black and white” stance of helping the Federal Bureau of Investigation to supporting Tim Cook.

Apple argues that the Justice Department is overstepping its authority by forcing the company to help disable the encryption on an iPhone used by one of the two shooters who killed 14 people at a holiday party in San Bernardino on Dec 2.

He added: “Some things are hard and some things are right”.

He acknowledged at one point that Apple had been very helpful in the months leading up to the court clash and said that there were “no demons” in the debate. Apple says that the government is asking it to create a software that doesn’t exist and it is an abuse of the law and violation of the company’s constitutional rights.

Apple has said Congress, not the courts, should resolve the dispute. The deadline for filing is March 3, and the tech giant expects major support from nearly every tech industry member, so that the outcome can be in the best interest of the public. The All Writs Act is a central law that a magistrate-judge referenced in her order to Apple.

An Apple spokesman declined to comment publicly.

FBI Director James Comey and Apple’s general counsel, Bruce Sewell, are among those expected to testify.

Technology companies such as Google, Twitter, Microsoft, Yahoo and Facebook lauded Apple’s keeping its moral ground in the debacle.