Judge orders Apple to help FBI unlock another iPhone; will issue reach the Supreme Court?
A federal magistrate judge in Boston has issued an order requiring Apple to help the FBI access a locked iPhone to get potential evidence for a gang case.
Unsealed Friday at the request of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, documents in the case of alleged Columbia Point Dawgs member Desmond Crawford show that Judge Marianne Bowler ordered Apple in February to provide “reasonable technical assistance” to the feds, reports the Associated Press.
“Such reasonable technical assistance consists of, to the extent possible, extracting data from the device, copying the data from the device onto an external hard drive or other storage medium, and returning the aforementioned storage medium to law enforcement, and/or providing the FBI with the suspect personal identification number,” she wrote in an order compelling Apple’s cooperation.
In a much-publicized case in California, another federal magistrate ordered Apple to help the FBI get data from the iPhone of San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook. However, as Apple resisted the FBI was able to get the help it needed from an unidentified third party, so the feds asked the judge to dismiss that case.
The method used to unlock Farook’s phone, whatever it was, would be unlikely to work on Crawford’s phone because it is a later model, the AP article notes.
From 2008 until some point last year, Apple was routinely cooperating in such cases, reports the Wall Street Journal (sub. req.).
But after a federal magistrate judge in Brooklyn, New York, questioned whether the government had the authority to demand such help concerning a suspect’s iPhone in a drug case there, the company took a different tack.
At this point, both Apple and the government expect that the issue will be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court, the newspaper says. However, as a number of cases involving iPhones proceed, it isn’t clear which might go to the nation’s top court.
In the Brooklyn case, defendant Jun Feng pleaded guilty last year. Nonetheless, the government has asked a higher federal judge to review a ruling by Magistrate James Orenstein that the court didn’t have authority to order Apple to help unlock his phone.
In a Friday letter to a higher judge, the feds insisted that the issue is not moot and it needs the court’s assistance in enforcing an order requiring Apple to cooperate in obtaining information the government is authorized by warrant to obtain, reports the New York Times (reg. req.).
USA Today and the Washington Post (reg. req.) also have stories.
Related coverage:
ABAJournal.com: “DOJ says it unlocked iPhone of San Bernardino shooter, seeks to vacate order requiring Apple’s help”
ZDNet: “Apple won’t sue FBI to reveal hack used to unlock seized iPhone”
