Apple vs FBI : Federal Court Rules in Favour of Privacy
This are heating up in Apple’s fight with the FBI. On the eve of a Congressional hearing about the Department of Justice’s fight with Apple over unlocking San Bernardino terror suspect’s iPhone, a court in Brooklyn in a separate case has rejected an FBI request to order Apple to unlock the phone of a drug dealer.
The Department of Justice of the United States had first sought access to the phone in the Brooklyn case in October, months before a court in California ordered Apple to help authorities gain access to the phone of a terror suspect.
In stark contradiction to the San Bernardino terror case, Judge James Orenstein has ruled that “he did not have the legal authority to order Apple to disable the security of an iPhone that was seized during a drug investigation”
Although the judge in the San Bernardino case, will not be bound by Orenstein’s decision, analysts expect it to be influential. In both cases, the government relies on the All Writs Act.
Orenstein in his ruling indirectly gave support to the key arguments Apple is making in its other, higher-profile fight with the government. He hinted, the All Writs Act (AWA) can’t be used to order a technology company to manipulate its products. He further said. “The implications of the government’s position are so far-reaching – both in terms of what it would allow today and what it implies about Congressional intent in 1789 – as to produce impermissibly absurd results,”
