Here in 2016, Apple may be at odds with the FBI on the subject of iPhone unlocking — but things weren’t always that way!
According to a new report, when the FBI first asked Apple to help it unlock an iPhone, way back in 2008, Apple didn’t just comply with the order; it actually helped prosecutors to draft the court order.
The case in question involved the prosecution of a married couple from Watertown, New York, who were involved in an horrific case of child sex abuse. In this instance, an iPhone was discovered discarded inside a bag of diapers. It is thought that this may be the first time the All Writs Act was invoked to help unlock one of Apple’s handsets.
As the Wall Street Journal notes:
“[Apple] wanted a court order authorizing it to crack a customer’s passcode. But it was otherwise cooperative: An Apple lawyer supplied the Justice Department with language to use in the agency’s legal request for the order, according to the brief.
…
U.S. Magistrate Judge George Lowe signed the order within hours of the Justice Department’s request. A New York State Police investigator then took the iPhone to Apple’s headquarters in California, according to court documents and a person familiar with the case.Apple engineers bypassed the phone’s passcode in the investigator’s presence, according to court documents filed in Brooklyn.”
Both the husband and wife in the case plead guilty to federal charges in October 2009 and were sentences to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Since then, Apple helped the feds to access more than 70 iPhones, but it became more reticent about this after tightening up iPhone encryption in 2014. Interestingly, 2013 was the year in which the Edward Snowden revelations broke — showing the extent of government surveillance on citizens.
In other words, Apple seemed more than happy to help the government until it breached the trust of users. But I’m sure Apple are still the bad guys in all of this, right?
