It could be propaganda. Or what do you call it, a double bluff? And unluckily, we have no way of knowing.
You know, the whole thing is pretty pointless for the FBI, any tracks they might follow are cold by now. There seems to be some strong resistance to the whole idea, too. So... alltogether there's not much to win but a lot to lose.
They could as well give up. Except, if they do, they will lose face.
Except... if they say "Never mind, we got a little help from our friends whom you hear breathing on your phone, and we figured it out anyway. It was no biggie". That way, they not only don't lose face, but they may also very successfully spread FUD. Saying "government can relatively trivially break state-of-the-art encryption" provides a lot of fear, uncertainity, and doubt.
Why is this important? Fear and uncertainity play a big, big role. It's pretty much the same principle as with a polygraph test. A polygraph cannot detect lies, but it's enough if you have some fear and uncertainity about it. It's enough for the interviewer to shout at you afterwards, telling you that you failed the test. The machine very clearly showed that you are guilty, and you are going to serve 25+ years. Unless you confess, then maybe one might arrange for 10 years.
Now imagine that for whatever reason you are suspected (or maybe even guilty) of a crime. Police or FBI or whoever seizes your phone, and it's encrypted. What do they tell you? They'll say: "We can decrypt it, no problem. You know we can, we did it before. It's just that we would like to avoid the expenses, which are about half a million dollars, so we would prefer if you cooperated. Of course, if you refuse to cooperate, and we find the slightest thing, you will be liable for the cost. You know that we will decrypt it anyway, you know you can't hide anything, you don't have any way out".
The strong resistance against this backdoor that is presently seen now might cease to exist in the future, too. If the FBI can decrypt the data anyway (FUD), why make such a big fuss about it? Come on, don't be an asshole, just give them their backdoor, save tax payer's money.
Can't tell which one it is, since nobody but the FBI knows what is on that phone, and they aren't telling you what they find anyway, so nobody can verify. Might be they really broke the encryption, might be they found another way, or maybe the PIN was 1234. Or maybe... just FUD.
What's alarming is that even having the possibility of FUD in mind, it fosters the impression that there really exists nothing that is even reasonably safe. Perfectly safe doesn't exist, everybody knows... but one should hope "reasonably" safe exists. It does not seem so.
Makes me think of this story of stolen passports in Greece a week ago. That guy whom the TV team interviewed (have to wonder why he and his friends aren't in prison, seeing how a reporter found them easily enough, they shouldn't be too hard to find for the police...) said something like "Yeah, we only make like 80 of these per day. It is a bit tedious because we also need to reprogram the biometric RFID chips. You know, the photo on the chip and everything, has to be the same like the photo in the passport, or the border official will notice".
Excuse me? Reprogram the what? It's bad enough that there is no apparent security preventing anyone from reading the data. It's only super sensitive personal data after all, heh.
But... they are reprogrammable? Just like this? With a laptop in a backyard shop? You have got to be kidding me. I mean, if forgery is the one thing you want to prevent, what's the one obvious thing you shouldn't do? Place the information on a medium that supports being overwritten. Duh.