The battle between Apple and the Federal Bureau of Investigation is still going on, and now a new filing from the Department of Justice is managing to spice things up even more.
As revealed in a new filing, as reported by CNBC, the DOJ states that Apple’s comments regarding the whole ordeal are “corrosive,” stating that its request to force Apple to help the FBI access an iPhone 5c is “narrow and targeted,” implying that the results of that court case will not hold a precedence on any future cases. They even add that it “invades no one’s privacy.”
“Here, Apple deliberately raised technological barriers that now stand between a lawful warrant and an iPhone containing evidence related to the terrorist mass murder of 14 Americans. Apple alone can remove those barriers so that the FBI can search the phone, and it can do so without undue burden.”
The latest filing is simply echoing past statements from the DOJ, reiterating again that this case is simply focused on the one iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters, and no other phones. Which, technically, is accurate. However, the Director of the FBI has even admitted more than once that precedence is something that the agency is banking on. In fact, it’s not a secret that law enforcement is currently seeking to unlock several different iPhones for a variety of different reasons.
In what’s probably the strangest addition to this latest filing, though, is the DOJ stating that Apple basically makes a lot of money, and has a lot of people working for the company, so they should assist the FBI. Just because, apparently:
“Apple’s rhetoric is not only false, but also corrosive of the very institutions that are best able to safeguard our liberty and our rights: the courts, the Fourth Amendment, longstanding precedent and venerable laws, and the democratically elected branches of government.”
