[Swordmaker]

Second U.S. Bid to Force Apple to Unlock Phone Ends in a Whimper. . . outside source brings in the passcode to the iPhone, so the Department of Justice folded and shut down their appeal. It looks to me that they really do not want an Appellate Court level decision supporting the Magistrate Judge's ruling that the All Writs Act is not an appropriate tool to force Apple or any other company to do what they were trying to get them to do, or to do an end run around the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1994 that prohibited what the FBI was attempting to force Apple to do. — PING!

Apple V. FBI/DOJ case ENDS with a Whimper from the DOJ
Ping!

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[DiogenesLamp]

Second U.S. Bid to Force Apple to Unlock Phone Ends in a Whimper (Link only due to Copyright)

Now that the FBI has that "Backdoor" that Apple's Chicken Little's were screaming about, they have no need to bother with Apple any more.

Apple no longer has any relevance to the matter. Apple caused the very thing they were claiming to be afraid of.

[bigbob]

They broke Apple’s products, everyone knows the security is just an illusion.

[Bubba Gump Shrimp]

Since when did it become necessary for our intelligence agencies to divulge what security we can and cannot crack.

They went about this all wrong, attempting to force Apple to give them the “key”.

The enigma code was broken well before anyone knew it was broken, and we used that information to our advantage. Telling the Germans we broke it would have been disastrous.

I scratch my head on this one.

It should be highly classified what we can and cannot break into.

[Swordmaker]

FEDS SAY THEY'VE ACCESSED PHONE AT CENTER OF APPLE DATA CASE
BY LARRY NEUMEISTER—ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK (AP) -- The U.S. Justice Department said it has withdrawn a request to force Apple to reveal data from a cellphone linked to a New York drug case after someone provided federal investigators with the phone's passcode.

Federal prosecutors said in a letter to U.S. District Judge Margo Brodie that investigators were able to access the iPhone late Thursday night after using the passcode.

The government said it no longer needs Apple's assistance to unlock the iPhone and is withdrawing its request for an order requiring Apple's cooperation in the drug case.

Read more at the link above. . .

[Swordmaker]

US no longer requires Apple's help to crack iPhone in New York case
By John Ribeiro — IDG News Service Apr 22, 2016 8:54 PM

The government said "an individual" had given it the passcode to the phone.

The U.S. no longer requires Apple’s assistance to unlock an iPhone 5s phone running iOS 7 used by the accused in a drug investigation, stating that an “individual provided the passcode to the iPhone at issue in this case.”

The Department of Justice has withdrawn its application in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

DOJ had earlier appealed to District Judge Margo K. Brodie an order from Magistrate Judge James Orenstein, ruling that Apple could not be forced to provide assistance to the government to extract data from the iPhone 5s.

“Yesterday evening, an individual provided the passcode to the iPhone at issue in this case,” DOJ wrote in a filing to the court late Friday. “Late last night, the government used that passcode by hand and gained access to the iPhone.” The filing did not provide information on who the individual was and in what capacity he was acting.

Jun Feng, the accused in the methamphetamine possession and distribution investigation, provided the passcode to investigators, said The Wall Street Journal, quoting people familiar with the matter. Feng has already pleaded guilty and is due to be sentenced. He had earlier told investigators that he didn’t remember the passcode.

The filing in the New York court has parallels to another dispute between Apple and the government over assistance in cracking an iPhone 5c running iOS 9 used by one of the terrorists in the San Bernardino killings in December. In that case in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, the government had demanded Apple’s assistance but later asked the court to vacate its order as it had accessed data stored on the phone, using a tool from a third party.

The tool addressed only a “narrow slice” of iPhones, Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey said earlier this month. While it could unlock the the iPhone 5c running iOS 9, the tool does not work on the iPhone 5s or 6, he said. Apple, meanwhile, demanded to know in the New York case whether the government had exhausted all other options to get to the data.

Judge Orenstein had ruled that Apple can’t be forced to extract data from the iPhone 5s under a statute called the All Writs Act, the same law invoked in the California case.

The government’s reading of the All Writs Act, a statute enacted in 1789 and commonly invoked by law enforcement agencies to get assistance from tech companies on similar matters, would change the purpose of the law “from a limited gap-filing statute that ensures the smooth functioning of the judiciary itself into a mechanism for upending the separation of powers by delegating to the judiciary a legislative power bounded only by Congress’s superior ability to prohibit or preempt,” Orenstein had written in his order.

The government’s withdrawal of its demand for Apple’s assistance in both the New York and California cases leaves unresolved a key legal issue whether the government can compel device makers to help break the encryption and other security in their products, which is an issue of significance both to tech companies and privacy groups.

Apple could not be immediately reached for comment.

[DoughtyOne]

[I want the USA back]

The government has no right to force. It can request, and pay a fee, and Apple can refuse. The government has acted illegally and needs to be prosecuted.
Unfortunately the corrupt government will not prosecute itself.