Justice Department Seeks to Force Apple to Extract Data From About 12 Other iPhones

The Justice Department is pursuing court orders to make Apple help investigators extract data from iPhones in about a dozen undisclosed cases around the country, in disputes similar to the current battle over a terrorist’s locked phone, according to a newly-unsealed court document. The other phones are evidence in cases where prosecutors have sought, as in the San Bernardino (CA) terror case, to use an 18th-century law called the All Writs Act to compel the company to help them bypass the passcode security feature of phones that may hold evidence, according to a letter from Apple which was unsealed in Brooklyn federal court Feb 23. The letter, written from an Apple lawyer to a federal judge, lists the locations of those phone cases: Four in Illinois, three in New York, two in California, two in Ohio, and one in Massachusetts. The letter doesn't describe the specific types of criminal investigations related to those phones, but people familiar with them said they don't involve terrorism cases.