Re: The end of Apple
"They would be arguing, to a Judge no less"
Maybe you haven't spent as much time as I have in courts.
Arguing is what lawyers do. But it's each other they argue with. And when it gets above the first level of tribunal the lawyers for the appellant are essentially arguing that the previous judge was wrong. In this particular case that argument in respect of the first level tribunal is very easy to make: the warrant was issued without Apple even being able to argue their case at all.
And the argument would very simply be that part of their reputation as far as their customers are concerned is their security. If they were forced to degrade that their product would be less valuable.
"The FBI have been pretty clever with this one"
You're right there. They have chosen a specific case where some of the arguments are eliminated because the suspect is dead and wasn't the owner. It's a case where they stand the best chance of getting a precedent set although some of their colleagues have already blown the "just this once" aspect by publicly lining up all the other cases. And if they got a precedent restricted to cases where the suspect was dead this would be very dangerous indeed: an incentive to shoot first and ask questions later.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
