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You're both accurate here:

> The implications of the government’s demands are chilling. If the government can use the All Writs Act to make it easier to unlock your iPhone, it would have the power to reach into anyone’s device to capture their data. The government could extend this breach of privacy and demand that Apple build surveillance software to intercept your messages, access your health records or financial data, track your location, or even access your phone’s microphone or camera without your knowledge.

Once there's a backdoor, the legal precedence and technical capability will exist to use it on any device. The precedence would also exist to request support in backdooring other parts of the OS.

It's FBI Director Comey's explicit goal[0] to destroy the notion of strongly secured encryption for civilians. From an an address to Congress July 2015:

> Thank you for the opportunity to testify today about the growing challenges to public safety and national security that have eroded our ability to obtain electronic information and evidence pursuant to a court order or warrant. We in law enforcement often refer to this problem as “Going Dark.”

[...]

> We would like to emphasize that the Going Dark problem is, at base, one of technological choices and capability. We are not asking to expand the government’s surveillance authority, but rather we are asking to ensure that we can continue to obtain electronic information and evidence pursuant to the legal authority that Congress has provided to us to keep America safe.

In other words, encryption makes it harder for the FBI to collect people's information. They therefore want to make sure encryption as implemented can't block the FBI.

Further on:

> The debate so far has been a challenging and highly charged discussion, but one that we believe is essential to have. This includes a productive and meaningful dialogue on how encryption as currently implemented poses real barriers to law enforcement’s ability to seek information in specific cases of possible national security threat.

[...]

> We should also continue to invest in developing tools, techniques, and capabilities designed to mitigate the increasing technical challenges associated with the Going Dark problem. In limited circumstances, this investment may help mitigate the risks posed in high priority national security or criminal cases, although it will most likely be unable to provide a timely or scalable solution in terms of addressing the full spectrum of public safety needs.

Encryption, when implemented in a way that legitimately secures a person's data from unauthorized access, the FBI can't just get in and take the data. Comey would like Congress to support policy and tools that can get around that, because terrorism.

The Apple situation feels very foot-in-door to me.

0: https://www.fbi.gov/news/testimony/going-dark-encryption-tec...

The real security risk is the ability to update the phone's OS without authorized user consent at least as strong as the original protection the FBI are trying to break.

Right now it all hinges on Apple's private key and that's a very thin wire to hang all this privacy off.

I've never been an Apple fan but this was a fantastic and bold move by them. Software security and hacking is already an enormous problem that every single person has to deal with. Even major companies like the NYTimes have been hacked by malicious users in the recent past. We need to take every reasonable action to combat this threat. Building deliberate vulnerabilities (yes, every backdoor is a vulnerability) into our software and devices is going to make all of us less safe, and all of us more vulnerable to unforeseeable attacks in the future.

The point is there currently is no backdoor. FBI wants Apple to create (and sign) an OS update with a backdoor and install it onto the suspect's phone. Specifically the backdoor is to remove the rate limiting and 10 attempts limitation on trying the passcode.

If you have a very strong passphrase (not a 6-digit code) then even that should be unbreakable even with brute force. Of course, most users have the 6 digit code.

If you read the actual court order a lot of your questions are answered. Here: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160216/17393733617/no-ju...

Also, the phone is an iPhone 5c. This doesn't have Touch ID and doesn't have the secure enclave. The same approach would not even be possible wouldn't even work on a 6 or 6s. http://blog.trailofbits.com/2016/02/17/apple-can-comply-with...

sounds like the backdoor already exists, but only Apple knows how to use it. same as if Apple knew a master password for this phone but refused to give it. they are saying they don't want to give it because once the FBI has it, then they are free to use it anywhere. pretty strange post from Apple.

probably they try to fight this request by arguing that the government is actually asking them to effectively remove security from all the phones (of this model at least). they would be happy to help break this one phone as long as it doesn't affect any other phone.

in that case, then Apple should just break the phone and give it back to the FBI after removing the backdoor.