Court Case Between Apple and DoJ Abruptly Ends After Phone is Accessed

The Department of Justice abruptly dropped their court action against Apple, Inc. earlier today after the FBI revealed that they were able to access an iPhone that had been used by one of the terrorists in the San Bernardino shooting.

The government had been trying to force Apple to allow the FBI to bypass the security features of a phone that had been used by Syed Farook. After receiving the request from the government, Apple went straight to the public, releasing a statement in which they said that they would not be honoring the request as it would undermine the security of all iPhone users.

The government pressed on and was attempting Apple to allow access to Farook's phone via court order. Apple said that the FBI was demanding that Apple engineers write code to help law enforcement and that this request would violate the First Amendment. In addition, Apple's lawyers also said that the government's demands would "infringe Apple's consitutional right to due process of law."

The government's lawyers struck back at Apple, calling the company "desperate" and "misleading", and that Apple's response was nothing more than a marketing ploy.

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The increasingly contentious court exchanges were brought to a sudden halt last week after the government revealed that an unnamed "third party" had come forward with a way to break into Syed Farook's iPhone. After successfully testing the method, the government revealed that they no longer required Apple's help and that the case would be dropped.

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This development could obviously had significant negative repercussions for Apple's business, as the government has now successfully demonstrated that at least some of Apple's iPhones are not fully secure.

The big question now is - will the government tell Apple how they accessed the phone so that the company can secure the phones of potentially millions of innocent and law-abiding Americans, or will they keep the knowledge of the vulnerability to themselves?

Filed under: General Knowledge