NY judge: US cannot make Apple provide iPhone data

March 01, 2016 10:46

A federal judge has ruled that the US Justice Department cannot use a 227-year-old law to force Apple to provide the FBI with access to locked iPhone data, dealing a blow to the government in its battle with the company over privacy and public safety.

The ruling, by US Magistrate Judge James Orenstein, yesterday applied narrowly to one Brooklyn drug case, but it gives support to the company's position in its fight against a California judge's order that it create specialised software to help the FBI hack into an iPhone linked to the San Bernardino terrorism investigation.

Orenstein belittled some government arguments, saying attorneys were stretching an old law "to produce impermissibly absurd results."

He rejected government claims that Apple was only concerned with public relations. He said he found no limit on how far the government would go to require a person or company to violate the most deeply-rooted values.

And he said claims that Apple must assist the government because it reaped the benefits of being an American company "reflects poorly on a government that exists in part to safeguard the freedom of its citizens."

Both cases hinge partly on whether a law written long before the computer age, the 1789 All Writs Act, could be used to compel Apple to cooperate with efforts to retrieve data from encrypted phones.

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