What if Apple says: give us this particular phone.
We will dump it and give you the contents. That’s all, no ‘tool’ or back door.
Problem is that Apple will have demonstrated the ability to get into a phone, and ... caved and set a prescedent.
It destroys the chain of evidence. The government can not document what is being done to the phone to get the data, therefore no court on the planet will allow that data to be used. Only if the government does the hacking and retrieves the data itself can they claim to have a clear chain of evidence. There is no “compromise” that involves the government not having possession of the phone.
I was thinking the same thing. Why not unlock the dead terrorists phone and hand it back to them. Why do they have to give them the backdoor?
Apple cannot dump or unlock and that’s the point.
The only way in is to overwrite the current OS with a newly created OS - a tool which can then be subpoenaed and used to open any iPhone.
The issue is how does the government force someone to do or create something — that can only be answered at the SCOTUS level which was how 0care came to be forced on everyone.