Roger Fingas
The U.S. federal government has invoked the All Writs Act at least 63 times to compel Apple and Google to help unlock devices involved in investigations, the American Civil Liberties Union said on Wednesday.
Most of the cases appear to involve drug-related crimes, the ACLU noted. The number of unlock-related orders may theoretically be higher, but in some instances the government did not publicly specify what kind of help it was seeking.
For Apple, the greatest concentrations of court orders have come in New York state (12) and California (11), according to ACLU data. Many other states have also played host however, some examples being Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, and Washington.
There are also a number of states where no orders have been issued against Apple or Google, such as Texas and Colorado. Only in one state, Oregon, has there been an order served against Google but not one against Apple. Indeed, Apple devices have been subject more frequently as a rule.
The All Writs Act was once at the center of an FBI attempt to unlock the iPhone of San Benardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook. Apple argued that it couldn't be forced to write new software under the act, and was prepared to challenge that point in court until the U.S. Department of Justice withdrew its legal action, saying it had discovered a way into the iPhone without Apple's help.
That outcome could impact at least one case in New York, which was put into limbo pending developments surrounding Farook's phone.
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12 Comments
USA Today and others have reported that there are 1000 of locked devices that the FBI was trying to get access to and were trying to use the Apple case as a precedence to access those phones. Even then, building a custom OS that would enable the government to unlock those phones should never be an option for data security concerns.
"We simply want the chance, with a search warrant, to try to guess the terrorist's passcode without the phone essentially self-destructing and without it taking a decade to guess correctly. That's it. We don't want to break anyone's encryption or set a master key loose on the land." -- James Comey ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Apparently that one phone sure gets around.
What... Wait. Some other poster today claimed google has paid off all the politicians and Apple should too???
I sure bet the FBI didn't like the taste of that ruling from the judge in Brooklyn one little bit with his liberal use of words such as "appalling" sprinkled throughout the 50 plus page very energetic condemnation of the FBI's argument.
Interesting, there seems to have been more toward Apple then Google, especially in the North East.