Personal privacy v national security

[finnbow]

I'm with Apple on this. They do not have the capability to get the data off of the phone without making changes to the operating system that will allow the FBI to do a "brute force" attack on the phone (use every possible password combination without wiping the phone clean after 10 password attempts). It's an iPhone 5c with iOS 9 which means it has a 4 digit passcode (i.e., 9,999 possibilities). Once this change is made to the OS (or if the software becomes available outside of Apple), nobody's iPhone is secure at that point.

The government is asking Apple to undertake the programming effort to the OS which will both cost money to do and will also break Apple's promise to its customers about security of its phones. Besides, even if they do this, there are available apps that future terrorists can (and do) use to encrypt communications anyway.