Re: Helping with our enquiries ...
Who owns the phone and whether they are OK with breaking into it is irrelevant for whether the court should be able to order Apple to do something when they are blameless for either the mass shooting in one case or drug dealing in the other.
The All Writs Act, if interpreted the way the FBI wants, would seem to allow them to compel any business to give them anything they want if they can argue it will help with the prosecution of a case. Maybe the NYPD wants the Mandarin Oriental to give them a block of suites to help them in a sting operation. Maybe they want Chase Manhattan to give them a $1 billion credit line. Why is forcing Apple to produce a special build of iOS OK but those things will remain out of bounds?
Look at the RICO laws, which were passed on the promise they would only ever be used to help prosecute the Mafia, since existing laws didn't do a good job of handling it. Now they are used for all sorts of things totally unrelated to the Mafia, which is only a tiny percentage of overall RICO cases. Give them an inch, they'll take a mile. That judge was quite correct to be worried about handing them that sort of power from the All Writs Act.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
