Technically they aren’t asking for a backdoor, they are asking for an OS update to be loaded onto this phone. Either way bad juju for personal liberty.
Yeah, an OS update CONTAINING a backdoor.
What was your point?
Well, technically still not a backdoor in the conventional sense.
The new OS will allow the FBI to disable the time delay and erase the phone after 10 tried feature. Then they will still try to hack the password the old fashion way.
And depending on the phone model, the OS model, and whether or not the shooters used a 16 digit passcode AND/OR alphanumeric digits, it still could be impossible timewise, i.e. over 6000 years with a 16 digit numeric passcode.
But of course they could hit it on the very first try.
It's more than removing the access shutdown. They also want feedback from the OS to indicate password possibilities and try to exclude less likely candidates. There's all sorts of metadata feedback possibilities. NSA would be basically writing the specs for the backdoor OS based on their own cracking strengths.