Should Apple be forced to help the FBI unlock a phone belonging to a terrorist? The arguments are simple enough, but the ramifications and precedent that they set could undermine trust at the foundations of Silicon Valley, one of the largest industries in the world.
US judge Sheri Pym ruled Tuesday that the iPhone and iPad maker must provide a tool that would allow federal agents to beat a security feature preventing the phone from erasing after a number of failed unlocking attempts, according to the AP.
The court ruling did not order Apple to break the encryption, but said it should offer "reasonable technical assistance" to law enforcement.
The iPhone 5c was a work phone used by Syed Farook, who along with his wife, Tashfeen Malik, murdered 14 people in San Bernardino, California in December 2015.
Federal agents don't know the passcode to the phone, and run the risk of erasing all the data. But Apple doesn't have access to the passcode either. The company began locking itself out of the security chain to prevent law enforcement from demanding that it hands them over.
Apple's bid to shut itself out of the encryption loop was precisely to avoid the kind of ethical dilemma that would force it into handing over customer data to the authorities.
More than 94 percent of all iPhones and iPads, which run iOS 8 or later, can be encrypted.
