Case Suggests How Government May Get Around Phone Encryption

The Justice Department is turning to a 225-year-old law to tackle a very modern problem: password-protected cellphones. Prosecutors persuaded a federal magistrate in Manhattan to order an unnamed phone maker to provide “reasonable technical assistance” to unlock a password-protected phone that could contain evidence in a credit-card-fraud case, according to court filings.

The court had approved a search warrant for the phone three weeks earlier. The phone maker, its operating system and why the government has not been able to unlock it remain under seal. The little-noticed case could offer hints for the government’s strategy to counter new encryption features from Apple and Google, say privacy advocates and people familiar with such cases say. “It’s part of what I think is going to be the next biggest fight that we see on surveillance as everyone starts to implement encryption,” said Jennifer Granick, director of civil liberties at Stanford University’s Center for Internet and Society. Pointing to the phrase “technical assistance” in the order, she asked, “Does this mean you have to do something to your product to make it surveillance friendly?”