No, the FBI is obviously following the Fourth Amendment.
Apple is selling a device that makes a valid Fourth Amendment warrant useless.
The FBI is effectively taking the position that Apple does not have the right to sell a device with unbreakable encryption. CALEA, passed by a Democrat majority Congress, explicitly rejects this position.
On the day that Obama announced that his administration would not seek a law to outlaw unbreakable encryption, the Justice Department filed application for writs against Apple to provide software to weaken their encryption scheme ... and thus have the courts do what they decided to not ask Congress to do.
I concede that there are good arguments on both sides of this issue, but lawyers twisting a 1789 law should not be the way to decide this ... this is an issue that should be decided only by Congress. And Congress, through CALEA, has explicitly rejected the Administration position that there should be no devices sold which provide unbreakable encryption.
I can’t fully support the FBI on the writ, it’s just too complicated an issue involving court procedures.
I have read the NY order and find it intelligent and thorough.
The only dispute I will make is that CALEA was written in 1994 and I don’t think ‘unbreakable’ encryption was considered by the congress. IIRC there was no such thing at the time! Certainly not in the consumer market.
Everyone should know that this is an effort by the FBI to force congress to address the issue. I think it important that they do so. This has far-ranging effects on our constitutional rights both as seekers of justice and as suspects, as defendants and as plaintiffs.
IMO ubiquitous ‘unbreakable’ encryption destroys centuries of the development of legal methods. A way to avoid that must be found- and soon.