NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. Justice Department cannot force Apple to provide the FBI with access to a locked iPhone data in a routine Brooklyn drug case, a magistrate judge ruled Monday.
U.S. Magistrate Judge James Orenstein’s written decision gives support to the company’s position in its fight against a California judge’s order that it create specialized software to help the FBI hack into an iPhone linked to the San Bernardino terrorism investigation. Apple’s filing to oppose the order by Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym in California is due by Friday.
The San Bernardino County-owned iPhone 5C was used by Syed Farook, who was a health inspector. He and his wife Tashfeen Malik killed 14 people during a Dec. 2 attack that was at least partly inspired by the Islamic State group.
Apple’s opposition to the government’s tactics has evoked a national debate over digital privacy rights and national security.
Orenstein concluded that Apple is not obligated to assist government investigators against its will and noted that Congress has not adopted legislation that would achieve the result sought by the government.
“How best to balance those interests is a matter of critical importance to our society, and the need for an answer becomes more pressing daily, as the tide of technological advance flows ever farther past the boundaries of what seemed possible even a few decades ago,” Orenstein wrote. “But that debate must happen today, and it must take place among legislators who are equipped to consider the technological and cultural realities of a world their predecessors could not begin to conceive.”
A Justice Department spokesman said they were disappointed in the ruling and planned to appeal in the coming days. Apple and their attorneys said they were reading opinion and will comment later.
In October, Orenstein invited Apple to challenge the government’s use of a 227-year-old law to compel Apple to help it recover iPhone data in criminal cases.
The Cupertino, California-based computer maker did, saying in court papers that extracting information from an iPhone “could threaten the trust between Apple and its customers and substantially tarnish the Apple brand.”
It followed up by declining to cooperate in a dozen more instances in four states involving government requests to aid criminal probes by retrieving data from individual iPhones.
Federal prosecutors say Apple has stopped short of challenging court orders judicially, except in the cases before Orenstein and the California jurist who ruled about the San Bernardino shooter’s phone.
“Ultimately, the question to be answered in this matter, and in others like it across the country, is not whether the government should be able to force Apple to help it unlock a specific device; it is instead whether the All Writs Act resolves that issue and many others like it yet to come,” Orenstein wrote. “For the reasons set forth above, I conclude that it does not.”
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Abdollah reported from Washington.
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The most ridiculous aspect of this case is that the FBI is trying to force Apple to create a product that doesn’t exist, at Apple’s expense no less. What the hell is wrong with that picture?
Also, among the many bullshit aspects of this is that the FBI has already admitted that, if the phone was unlocked, it is highly unlikely there is anything worthwhile in it.
This is just a ploy to get their hands on a tool that doesn’t exist but they’d really, really, really like to have. After all, the combined multi-trillion dollar talents of the NSA, CIA, FBI, et al, just can’t seem to do this (which, by the way, is supposedly part of their raison d’être).
Ever hear of Total Information Awareness? And where is that slimy bastard Poindexter these days? Fuck the NSA, CIA and FBI. They’ve already proven time and again they can’t do their jobs. Why do they even exist?
If the government spent 1% of its time doing the RIGHT THING, we wouldn’t be cultivating those who hate us, not for our ‘freedoms’, but because of our actions. Instead, they are judge shopping for an ideologue that will be in favor of the Cheney doctrine. “If there is a 1% chance that something will happen, then anything we do is OK.”
I hope that the special rights that are being given to corporations are available to humans as well. The human brain contains a lot of encrypted information that witnesses may be forced to provide to law enforcement and to government agencies,
And that advance will not slow-- but increase in rapidity.
jw1
@TominAZ: I am not sure of your premise. The nature of the Wahabbi Sunni terrorist threat is unique. Even if you granted them their caliphate and everything in their wildest dreams, they would still hate. Their faith, their belief systems, values, political, educational, social and cultural circumstances fosters a murderous hate of the other in susceptible individuals.