Judge orders Apple to help FBI unlock California shooter’s iPhone

A U.S. judge has ordered Apple to help the FBI break into a phone recovered from one of the San Bernardino shooters, an order that heightens a long-running dispute between tech companies and law enforcement over the limits of encryption. Apple must provide “reasonable technical assistance” to investigators seeking to unlock the data on an iPhone 5C that had been owned by Syed Rizwan Farook, Judge Sheri Pym of U.S. District Court in Los Angeles said in a ruling. That assistance includes disabling the phone’s auto-erase function, which activates after 10 consecutive unsuccessful passcode attempts and assisting investigators to submit passcode guesses electronically.

Apple has the exclusive technical means which would assist the government in completing its search, but has declined to provide that assistance voluntarily.

Prosecutors in court

Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles on Tuesday requested the court order to compel Apple to assist the investigation into the Dec. 2 shooting rampage by Farook and his wife that killed 14 people and injured 22 others. The two were killed in a shootout with police. Prosecutors said Apple could still help investigators by disabling “non-encrypted barriers that Apple has coded into its operating system.” Apple and Google both adopted strong default encryption in late 2014, amid growing digital privacy concerns spurred in part by the leaks from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden.

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