Last summer, terrorists Syed Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik they killed 14 people in an attack that took place in San Bernadino, USA, the FBI managing to get hold of the iPhone of one of them, but being unable to access its data by itself, asked a court to force Apple to help the agency.
An American judge ruled that Apple must help the FBI in accessing the data from that iPhone 5C owned by the authorities, the company from Cupertino refusing so far to offer its help voluntarily, but now it could be forced to do so.
The court decision still talks about the fact that Apple must offer its help within reasonable limits, it having the possibility to attack this decision if it considers that we are not talking about a reasonable request, but about something that it cannot do.
The interesting part is that in the judge's decision several methods are offered by which the data from the terrorist's iPhone can be accessed, they involve deactivating the automatic data deletion function when a security code is entered too many times, the FBI being able to use a brute force attack to discover the security code.
We still have one of those killers' phones that we haven't been able to open. It has been two months and we are still working on it. I don't want a back door. I would like people to comply with court orders. Apple has the exclusive technical means which would assist the government in completing its search, but has declined to provide that assistance voluntarily.
Apple has stated in the past before the courts that it does not have the possibility to access the data secured by iOS after setting a security code, and now it will probably try to convince the court of exactly the same thing in order not to have to provide access to the data.
