Apple doesn’t have to expose any of their software to anyone. They could take the phone for a day, unlock it, and give it back. Simple as that.
Honestly the terrorists should not be able to expect privacy. Now terrorists will buy apple products in droves because they know the apple traitors won’t turn on them.
It was the “employer” who is at fault .. not Apple. The employer is supposed to know how to set up the phone so they maintain control over it, no matter how many employees they give it to over the years.
Go read what Rush wrote about this .. it will really clear things up.
“chain of custody...”
You do know that Terrorists usually use "burner" phones don't you? These are phones they can throw away at a moment's notice after smashing them. The San Bernardino terrorists were no different. They both had a burner phone which they carefully SMASHED, and along with their destroyed computers and separately destroyed hard drives, threw them in a lake. There are also numerous 256 bit AES encryption apps out there to hide their data for both JAILBROKEN iOS devices, Microsoft, and Android phones. Those could have unbreakable passcodes on them that NO ONE could break into so it really doesn't matter WHO builds the phones. It is the principle of personal privacy that counts here.
The FBI knows who was contacted on this iPhone, etc. The BURNER phones? They probably know not a thing about. Zip, nothing.
My thinking is that since this phone was his work phone, it is highly unlikely there is anything incriminating on it at all. My suspicion is that it is entirely BLANKED. Totally erasing an iPhone is a trivial thing to do. That's an impossible thing to do on the vast majority of Android devices. It takes only about three to five minutes to do on an iOS device. . . and the iPhone/iPad will be back to factory new blank condition with no remnants of the user's data left at all. Nothing recoverable.