Apple Has Gotten Federal Orders To Help Unlock At Least 13 Devices - Bill Chappell

While the dispute over cracking into an iPhone used by the San Bernardino shooter is at the center of a legal case between Apple and the FBI, the company recently told a federal court that it has received — and resisted — similar orders to help unlock iPhones and an iPad in recent months.

That's according to unsealed court documents in which Apple says that since early October, it has received orders to access data on 12 devices, from an iPhone 3 to two iPhone 6 Plus models. In the documents, the Department of Justice says the list is correct — and adds that it found "at least one additional All Writs Act order" for obtaining information from an iPhone.

News of the court filings comes ahead of Friday's deadline for Apple to formally respond to a federal court order in the San Bernardino investigation. Wednesday, Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., a prominent First Amendment lawyer who is a lead attorney for Apple in the case, told The Associated Press that the company will tell the judge that the issue should be decided by Congress, not by the courts.

"The FBI is relying on a law called the All Writs Act from 1789 that's been used to compel companies to assist law enforcement in investigations," NPR's Alina Selyukh reports for our Newscast unit. "And Boutrous told the AP that Apple also plans to argue that that law has never been used to require a company to write software."

In the court document, Apple says the requests for it to help get inside the devices came from U.S. attorneys' offices in a range of districts, including New York, Illinois, Massachusetts and California. The company has said that complying with such orders would require it to create a software tool that could make millions of iPhones vulnerable to invasions of users' privacy.

An attorney for the tech company, Marc Zwillinger, submitted the list of such government orders on Feb. 17. It was in response to a request from a federal court in New York that was weighing a similar dispute over an iPhone in a drug case. The government responded on Monday, and Apple's list was unsealed Tuesday. - Read More at the Apple

Apple Has Gotten Federal Orders To Help Unlock At Least 13 Devices

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