Skip to main content

Boost for Apple as NY judge rules tech firm doesn’t have to unlock iPhone for FBI

apple-logo
Image used with permission by copyright holder
Apple’s ongoing battle with the FBI over phone privacy received a boost Monday when a New York judge said the government cannot force the tech firm to access data on a locked iPhone that may provide evidence in a drug-related criminal case.

As with the high-profile San Bernardino case, the FBI tried to use the All Writs Act – a law introduced more than 200 years ago – to force Apple to comply with its request, but Brooklyn judge James Orenstein rejected the government’s action.

Recommended Videos

“After reviewing the facts in the record and the parties’ arguments, I conclude that none of those factors justifies imposing on Apple the obligation to assist the government’s investigation against its will,” Judge Orenstein wrote. “I therefore deny the motion.”

Please enable Javascript to view this content

Orenstein said that ultimately, “the question to be answered in this matter, and in others like it across the country, is not whether the government should be able to force Apple to help it unlock a specific device; it is instead whether the All Writs Act resolves that issue and many others like it yet to come….I conclude that it does not.”

The All Writs Act, which became law in 1789, allows federal courts to issue orders that force third-parties to cooperate and be helpful to other court orders.

The ruling is the result of four months of deliberation by Judge Bernstein, and while the defendant in the drug case has already pleaded guilty, law enforcement says his phone could hold useful information for other investigations. Apple is yet to make any official comment on Judge Orenstein’s ruling, though the US Justice Department has said it intends to appeal.

Related: Even the FBI can’t defeat good encryption – here’s why it works

While Monday’s judgment has no direct connection with the San Bernardino case in which a California judge recently ordered Apple to help the government access the iPhone of one of the shooters involved in December’s attack, Judge Orenstein’s ruling will nevertheless be a boost for the tech giant and is likely to  come in useful as the company continues to argue its position against assisting the FBI by breaking into one of its own phones.

In the San Bernardino case, the government has asked Apple to create new software that would enable it to bypass security functions on an iPhone that belonged to Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the San Bernardino killers. The FBI believes it could hold vital information about who Farook and his wife communicated with and places they visited in the weeks and months leading up to the attack in which 14 people died.

Apple boss Tim Cook was quick to argue against the FBI’s move, saying that in the wrong hands, software used to unlock Farook’s phone “would have the potential to unlock any iPhone in someone’s physical possession.” The company said that such a step could damage the trust between Apple and its customers and adversely affect the Apple brand. “The same engineers who built strong encryption into the iPhone to protect our users would, ironically, be ordered to weaken those protections and make our users less safe,” Cook said.

Meanwhile, FBI director James Comey has argued that any software created to break the phone’s security would work on Farook’s phone only, “and so the idea of it getting out in the wild and it working on my phone or your phone….is not a real thing.”

You can check out DT’s full analysis of Apple’s unfolding battle with the FBI over encryption here.

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
Apple seeds critical update to guard iPhones from USB hacking tools
Installing iOS 18.3 update on an iPhone 16 Pro.

Apple has released a fresh software update for iPhones and iPads to plug a critical flaw that could allow bad actors to extract data even from a locked device. The company says if granted physical access, an attacker could break past the safety of USB Restricted Mode on the target iPhone or iPad.

The aforementioned guardrail prevents USB accessories from pulling data from an iPhone that has been sitting in a locked state for over an hour. It seems there was an authorization flaw within Apple’s Accessibility framework that could allow an attacker to disable the USB Restricted Mode safety net.

Read more
Spigen just accidentally leaked iPhone SE 4 renders
iPhone SE 4 leak by Majin Bu.

The iPhone SE 4 has been a highly-anticipated handset for a while now, and we expect it to drop sometime next week. We just got another good look at it, courtesy of case manufacturer Spigen. The company uploaded images of its case to its website, along with an iPhone inside the case. The website says it's an iPhone SE (3rd gen), but one look at the images shows that isn't the case.

Of course, we already had a solid idea of what the iPhone SE 4 would look like. The renders don't really come with any surprises; in many ways, the iPhone SE 4 looks like the iPhone 14, complete with the notch at the top. The case renders also show a single camera on the rear of the phone. One interesting change is the Alert Slider — the button on the side of your iPhone that enables/disables vibration — seems to have been replaced with an Action Button instead.

Read more
The U.K. wants unchecked access to all iPhones worldwide
A person holding an iPhone in their hand.

In 2016, the FBI requested Apple to grant it an iOS backdoor access, but the company rejected it, with the “No” coming straight from CEO Tim Cook. In 2021, Apple even sued an Australian company that unlocked an iPhone for the same federal law enforcement agency.

Apple is once again at a security crossroads that could pose an existential threat to its iPhone business, and the privacy of users across the globe. According to The Washington Post, the British government has ordered Apple to give them “blanket” access to the encrypted materials saved by iPhone users on the iCloud online storage drive.

Read more