Right. I understand that. But how do you install the firmware without unlocking the device first?

If it were possible, people would *already be doing it* without Apple's help.

It's quite possible that Apple built in a firmware upgrade path that can bypass the pin lock, in case they needed to be able to recover customer devices that had been bricked by a bug in a previous firmware update.

It doesn't represent a security hole unless Apple's firmware signing keys are compromised (or the government forces them to deploy custom firmware, as in this case), and it mitigates a lot of risk around firmware updates to have a path back from a bad update.

What of users who are not software savvy?

Anyone remember Shellshock? Forget people who aren't tech savvy enough to go looking for exploits, security experts missed a mistake that left an exploit open for decades. What do you think a team of programmers trying to hide a backdoor are going to be able to come up with?

On a different note, if the FBI is asking for such a thing, is it really the government?

In my view, they're thugs employed by the government, not more. Is there a control process of sorts? Do they even ask the government when coming up with such a demand? Since PATRIOT they probably need no longer...

Depends how you define "government", I guess.

The FBI is part of the Department of Justice, and as such reports to the Attorney General, who sits directly on the President's cabinet. It's hard to be much more a part of the government than that.

It seems fairly unamimous here that the FBI is playing dirty. I hope that in non-tech circles, the view isn't too radically different, although I really doubt it.

I read a little bit more about the story, and apparently the FBI were the ones that went public with it. I assume knowing full-well that the "Apple supports Terrorsits!!" tagline will be smeared across the news. This is what prompted Mr. Cook to write an open-letter about it. I'm not sure if the public leak it was official, "unofficial", or unofficial.

It's very concerning across the board. They've been barking up the "we want total information access" tree for years. They applied publicity smear in a case that will make Apple look bad for resisting, and then play stupid on the topic of mass survailence. "Yeah, we just want this one little phone unlocked". That's like asking someone to build a hammer that will only break a specific window.

The Obama administration has been surprisingly heavy-handed in regards to anything relating to national security. It's possible that the admin is just too weak to keep them on a tight leash, but i doubt that's the case. Any party that's in power when/if a medium-to-large attack occurs will lose their seat in the finger-pointing fallout, so I'm betting the tactics are going to be a pernament feature of our country for decades - at least until time-wearyness and 'old news' syndrome sets in and the public stops caring.

What the US Justice System is compelling Apple to do is to provide a version of the firmware that runs their iPhone (and only their iPhone) that does not have a 5 second lockout on invalid PIN entry, does not have a wipe-on-too-many-invalid-attempts fail-safe, and allows PIN entry through a side channel. This will allow the FBI, and any other organization such as a crime syndicate or foreign power, to use the powerful brute-force password cracking machines already at their disposal.

Right. I understand that. But how do you install the firmware without unlocking the device first?

JTAG

Actually Apple CAN decrypt data on iPhone, they just chose not to do the research to do so

If Apple, or anyone else, was capable of cracking that level of cryptography we are none of us safe.

They applied publicity smear in a case that will make Apple look bad for resisting

Depends on the public. I've seen several articles bashing Apple, and multiple twitter users vowing to not buy Apple (ofcourse, everyone knows how valid internet vows are).

Depends on the public. I've seen several articles bashing Apple, and multiple twitter users vowing to not buy Apple (ofcourse, everyone knows how valid internet vows are).

I've seen the same. There are a few over-simplified and poorly researched articles simply stating the surface details followed by user comments "JUST UNLOCK THE DAMN PHONE, APPLE" and such. Whether the articles are simply over simplified because of a crappy writer/reporter or to purposely garner attention, I don't know. Even when the details are spelled out, not everyone may understand or read far enough to understand.

Even if the government doesn't control the press, they know what there are bad reporters and stupid people, so it's still propaganda being leveraged against a company imo.