The FBI filed another brief today in its ongoing fight to get Apple’s help in unlocking an iPhone belonging to San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook. With this filing, the FBI countered claims Apple has made in public statements and court filings, but didn’t lay out many new arguments.
“The government and the community need to know what is on the terrorist’s phone, and the government needs Apple’s assistance to find out,” the FBI’s brief states. “Instead of complying [with the FBI’s request], Apple attacked the All Writs Act as archaic. … 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 brief also rebuts Apple’s stance that creating the custom firmware needed to let the FBI unlock the phone would create a backdoor for future breaches. The code Apple is being asked to write, the brief claims, “simply disarms a booby trap affixed to one door.”
But Apple’s top lawyer responded with a scathing criticism of the FBI’s claims. Bruce Sewell, senior vice president of legal and government affairs, held a press conference this afternoon responding to the FBI’s most recent claims.
“The tone of the brief reads like an indictment,” he said, according to a transcript from Business Insider. “In 30 years of practice I don’t think I’ve seen a legal brief that was more intended to smear the other side with false accusations and innuendo, and less intended to focus on the real merits of the case.”
Sewell also pointed to the FBI’s claims of a special relationship the iPhone maker has with China. Not only did he say they were false, but he also noted that they are based on “unidentified Internet sources” in a tone that makes the FBI sound like your kooky uncle who claims the moon landing was faked.
“We would never respond in kind,” Sewell said, “but imagine Apple asking a court if the FBI could be trusted ‘because there is this real question about whether J. Edgar Hoover ordered the assassination of Kennedy—see ConspiracyTheory.com as our supporting evidence.'”
Apple and the FBI are headed to court on March 22, the day after Apple’s next big press conference, but we may hear from both sides again as the trial date draws nearer. While many arguments in the case have already been made in hearings and court documents, the proceedings should let both sides air their grievances more directly to the judge and each other.
