Apple started refusing to unlock iPhones last fall

The high-profile, high-stakes battle between Apple and the FBI over breaking the encryption on the iPhones of suspected criminals broke into the open this week, but it has been coming to a head since last fall, when Apple refused to unlock the iPhone 5S of a suspected drug dealer in New York, The New York Times reports. The suspect, Jun Feng, had a phone running iOS 7, which doesn't encrypt data automatically, but Apple's iOS 8, introduced in late 2014, and iOS 9 have stymied local and federal investigators. In the Feng case, after years of cooperating with law enforcement, Apple attorney Marc Zwillinger said Apple was drawing a line in the sand.

"We're being forced to become an agent of law enforcement," Zwillinger said in federal court in Brooklyn, arguing that the federal government was stretching the 18th century All Writs Act beyond recognition — the same argument Apple CEO Tim Cook made this week. The FBI has been pushing for access to encrypted iPhones and Android handsets for more than a year, but it wasn't until Loretta Lynch became attorney general that the FBI director got backing from the Justice Department.

The FBI found what it believed to be its perfect test case in the locked iPhone of San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook. This puts Apple on the side of a terrorist, former FBI criminal division chief Ron Hosko tells The Times. "Crack that thing for me now, Tim Cook, because it's only going to get worse." You can read more about Apple's brewing battle with the feds at The New York Times.

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