This case is about one iPhone and one search warrant, and one court order for Apple's assistance. There has been a decision (adverse to the government) in a similar case, involving one (different) iPhone, one search warrant, and one order for assistance. The Manhattan DA has stated that he has search warrants for 175 iPhones, each of which is the potential subject of a search order; these warrants would have been issued by New York state judges and have nothing to do with the federal government or the FBI. It also is reported that there are quite a few other similarly situated iPhones, split between federal and state or local jurisdiction.
The notion that a corporation should interpose itself between law enforcement officials and lawful targets of court issued and constitutional search warrants is perverse and likely far more novel than the government's reliance on the All Writs Act, which Apple accepted some 70 times in the past.
It would be a different matter if Apple could say honestly that they cannot provide the required assistance, or that they are no better situated to help than others, but they cannot and do not. Apple engineered and implemented the device security the government wants them to help bypass, and by virtue of their presumed monopoly of the ability to install it in the target iPhone are better positioned to bypass it than anyone else. They have opposed the order on legal grounds, and have conducted a PR campaign in which they suggest that creation and existence of the bypass software would pose a threat to iPhone owners everywhere, when in fact, because of the requirement that Apple sign iPhone software the marginal risk would be, in practical terms, zero. They also, but mostly others, have conflated the government's order with surveillance and wiretapping, to which it is essentially unrelated. Some have implied or stated that it would be an instrument of general oppression, which seems a bit of a stretch inasmuch as each iPhone would have to be in the government's possession and require assistance that Apple surely would not provide without being shown a properly issued search warrant.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
