Apple issues are hardest he’s seen in government — Federal Bureau of Investigation chief

“Because it’s really about who do we want to be as a country, and how do we want to govern ourselves”, Comey told the House Intelligence Committee. “It’s very clear Apple has been and wants to continue to do so, but it must have felt that the slope has gotten very slippery”, Levchin told “CBS This Morning” Friday.

“I believe that Apple is making an important point”, Smith said. “We would never write it. We have never written it – and that is what is at stake here”, he said. The company said that this new operating system, which would be void of specific security features now offered on the iOS platform, could be used on “hundreds” of iPhones that law enforcement agencies have collected from suspected criminals.

Comey reaffirmed what he posted in a blog Sunday night: that the Justice Department was not trying to set a precedent by going to court to obtain access to the phone.

One question that has surfaced amidst the heated debate is why the government can not hack into the phone without Apple’s assistance, but Levchin said that was “impossible”.

“Here, by contrast, the government has failed to demonstrate that the requested order was absolutely necessary to effectuate the search warrant, including that it exhausted all other avenues for recovering information”, Apple’s lawyers wrote in Thursday’s motion.

But the USA government has contended that judges have the right to enforce their own orders under the All Writs Act law of 1789 and thus compel Apple to obey the FBI’s request.

As to Apple’s assertion that the problem could have simply been resolved had the county installed the MDM application to Farook’s iPhone, San Bernardino County spokeman David Wert said that would not have made the device infallible. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, signaled Thursday that she is eager for Congress to take up the matter.

“This (master key) is not something we would create”, Cook said. “This is not about one case”, Pelosi said.

Comey acknowledged that last week’s order could help guide other courts considering the same issue in the future.

The order would “effectively require Apple to create full-time positions in a new “hacking” department to service government requests and to develop new versions of the back door software every time iOS changes” plus those engineers would likely have to testify as government witnesses in trials.

Apple’s motion states that it would be forced to create a forensics lab at its main headquarters in Cupertino, California, so that the government could use GovtOS, seemingly backing up Comey’s statement earlier today.