Judge in New York rules in favor of Apple in case involving locked iPhone

An iPhone.
(Image credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

A federal judge in New York ruled Monday that the U.S. Justice Department cannot force Apple to give the FBI information from a locked iPhone seized during a drug investigation in Brooklyn.

The Department of Justice argued that the All Writs Act from 1789 gives prosecutors the authority to force Apple to bypass the passcode system in order to gain access to the iPhone, a claim that was rejected by Magistrate Judge James Orenstein. The ruling comes two weeks after a California magistrate judge ordered Apple to create software so the government can gain access to the locked iPhone of one of the shooters who killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California, on Dec. 2.

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.