Apple Thursday filed a motion to vacate a federal magistrate’s order compelling the company to help federal investigators gain access to an iPhone used by one of the shooters in a December massacre in San Bernardino.
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Google, Microsoft, and Facebook are throwing their weight behind Apple in the company’s fight to avoid complying with a Federal court order to develop a version of iOS that lets the FBI launch brute force attacks on iPhone passcodes.
The FBI’s request for Apple to give it access to the San Bernardino shooters’ iPhone has turned into a tense standoff over the issues of encryption and security.
The dispute between Apple and the Justice Department is part of a larger debate within Congress, the administration and the technology industry about whether law enforcement and intelligence agencies should be able to access encrypted communications. “But the government knows those statements are not true; indeed the government has filed multiple other applications for similar orders, some of which are pending in other courts….”
Less than a day after Tim Cook likened the back door to a “software equivalent of cancer” on U.S. national television, the company’s lawyers explained in stark terms how the government’s request would “impose an unprecedented and oppressive burden on Apple and the citizens who use the iPhone”.
This involves writing software to disable its password protections to allow an infinite number of guesses without erasing data on the device.
Apple argued Thursday that there’s no law requiring it to unlock the iPhone because Congress has specifically chosen not to pass one. Apple’s brief notes that “the question whether companies like Apple should be compelled to create a backdoor to their own operating systems to assist law enforcement is a political question, not a legal one”. The magistrate judge suggested in her ruling that the government would be required to pay Apple’s costs.
The Justice Department responded to Apple’s motion by saying that a judge reviewed the Federal Bureau of Investigation request and found it both necessary and reasonable.
He also said he would try to make his case directly to president Barack Obama, although he did not say when or where they would meet. It was not meant to be used by “judges to compel innocent third parties to provide decryption services to the FBI”, Apple’s legal team wrote.
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Apple said Pym’s order violates the company’s First Amendment right to free speech and Fifth Amendment right to due process.
