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The Justice Department on Friday filed a motion to compel Apple to comply with a court order to help the FBI hack an iPhone used by one of the shooters in the San Bernardino, Calif., massacre. Apple earlier in the day had been given a three-day extension, until Feb. 26, to respond to the federal court order issued Tuesday. Apple CEO Tim Cook issued an open letter late Tuesday opposing the court order. He said the order would set a “dangerous precedent” and threaten the privacy and security of all its customers. The court’s demand would force Apple to write new software that would create a “backdoor” to bypass password-protection measures on its smartphones. Tech industry and civil liberties groups have voiced support for Apple’s position, while a number of politicians and law enforcement officials have backed the government’s stance. The DOJ motion seeks to expedite the court’s order that Apple help the FBI in accessing data on an iPhone 5C used by Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the shooters in the Dec. 2 attack, which left 14 people dead. The phone is owned by Farook’s former employer, the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health. The FBI wants to see if the iPhone holds data about possible accomplices and links to Islamist terrorist groups like ISIS. But the data is encrypted by default by Apple’s iOS operating system. The FBI wants Apple to disable the security option that erases data from an iPhone after 10 unsuccessful attempts to unlock it with a password. Investigators want to crack the password using “brute force” — electronically entering millions of combinations without risking deletion of the data. “Rather than assist the effort to fully investigate a deadly terrorist attack by obeying this court’s order of February 16, 2016, Apple has responded by publicly repudiating that order,” prosecutors wrote in a new filing Friday, ABC News first reported. The DOJ filing says Apple’s refusal to cooperate is “based on its concern for its business model and public brand marketing strategy,” AppleInsider reported. Scalper1 News
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