“I thought I read somewhere recently that there was a private party helping to show the government how to do this and that was the reason (speculation) why they were backing down on forcing Apple to do this. Anyone else see the same thing?”
This, from USA Today...
At this point, I'm not as sure as others on this thread that the Government "blinked" and lost.
I think it's entirely possible that the Israeli firm managed to "crack" the phone and give the Feds the data it wanted from the phone.
That would negate the primary reason for the judge's order which all along was the Government stating they "owed it to the families" to tell them whether or not they'd caught everyone responsible for killing their loved ones. Then there's the fact that the Federal Government really didn't like having an encryption scheme that they couldn't break.
Then there's always the possibility that the third-party Israeli firm managed to create a tool to reset the password counter in iOS which would then enable the Federal Government to unlock ANY phone at ANY time.
That would also in effect give the Federal Government what it wanted and negate the reason for the lawsuit.
So this could all be a ruse at this point designed to distract the public into thinking "Apple won" when in fact it may not have.
Yes, I'm that skeptical.