Justice Department Calls Apple’s Refusal to Unlock iPhone a ‘Marketing Strategy’

The Justice Department, impatient over its inability to unlock the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino (CA) killers, demanded that a judge immediately order Apple to give it the technical tools to get inside the phone. It said that Apple’s refusal to help unlock the phone for the FBI “appears to be based on its concern for its business model and public brand marketing strategy,” rather than a legal rationale. In court documents, prosecutors asked a federal judge to enforce an earlier order requiring Apple to provide the government with a tool to extract the data from a locked iPhone 5c. They are trying to get into the phone used by Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the attackers in the San Bernardino rampage, which left 14 dead. “Rather than assist the effort to fully investigate a deadly terrorist attack by obeying this court’s order of February 16, 2016,” prosecutors wrote in their latest filing, “Apple has responded by publicly repudiating that order.”