Several stories say Apple has unlocked phones in the past.  http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/02/17/apple-unlocked-iphones-for-the-feds-70-times-before.html

In another article, the journalist claims Apple never unlocked the phones, they simply bypassed the lock.  http://techcrunch.com/2016/02/18/no-apple-has-not-unlocked-70-iphones-for-law-enforcement/ 

Is that a distinction that matters?  "Your honor, I didn't pick the lock, I knocked a hole in the wall and got in that way."

The protection against "unreasonable search and seizure" doesn't apply when someone is already in custody for a capital crime.  If they are found guilty would anyone have a problem, at that point, with the phone being unlocked?  

Actually, being in custody does not negate the person's Constitutional protections. A Search Warrant would still have to be obtained or the evidence would be inadmissible.

If convicted? How'd they manage that without legally obtained evidence?

I live in the UK so I cannot and won't comment on the US.

But I will comment on this, because I practice a live and let live policy. I have no interest in voting for essentially the same three personalities every year, at least we get a bit more choice over the pond but still far too little. That doesn't mean either that I should have to move, this is my home.

The system either needs to do away with parties and have a list of professional candidates standing for government, the top scientists, doctors, teachers, businessmen and yes working class laborers, janitors for a representative vote, two from each profession. Would they be biased, yes of course everyone is biased to their own interest this just biases it to all professions, and all walks of life.

OR

It needs 50 parties with 50 candidates from all walks of life.
 

On a side note I also have no notion that folk are out to get me, they have a lot more important things to be doing, but I also have no illusions that over here at least we have far too many national laws, which often equates to less and less local common sense for the communities they are enforced in. I would hate for america to get as bad as the UK in that regard.

Member nations of the Commonwealth have the Magna Carta going for them, but not the specific rights enumerated in our Bill of Rights.  So the relationship between subject and crown is a little different from the relationship between citizen and state.

'Course, you knew that.

My country right or wrong.

Evil is cunning. Evil is also patient: it knows very well that most people would not accept a radical change overnight. That most people are good and would rebel if evil was suddenly imposed on them. It also knows that people are like frogs in slow boiling water - because the change in temperature is oh-so-gradual the frog will eventually let itself be boiled to death.

The heart slowly hardens as it is exposed to more and more misery. What would make people jump into action a few years ago, now barely makes them bat an eyelid.

So what does evil do? First it disguises its true motivation with what, on the surface, appears to be good intentions. It shows us the smaller picture hoping people will not be able to see the Truth, which can only be seen by looking at the much bigger picture, i.e.; at ALL the consequences of a particular change. Society adapts to the ever more permissive laws, but it never stops to take balance. It never pauses to look at the big picture (are things better or actually worse than they were before? And, if worse, why?) - it keeps blindly going forward.

Oh society does notice that the nuclear family is slowly being destroyed, that respect for life and freedom is slowly being eroded, that loyalty and honesty and keeping your word are now a rarity instead of a common trait. We more and more see young kids shooting other kids in schools, something that never happened before, and we look for answers in all the wrong places.

We don't want to face the truth because facing the truth would make us feel uncomfortable.

We expect our politicians to lie. We know well before-hand that they will get in bed with the powerful economic groups once in power, instead of defending who they were elected to defend. And we now accept all this as a 'fact of life'.

And in we so doing is where evil wins.

We think of all these as isolated situations. But they are not, because all these changes serve a common goal.

Totalitarianism is already here. Or rather, all the tools are already in place: CCTV everywhere (in the name of security, of course), the means to track down every individual's movements (GPS tracking on every cell phone) and thoughts (what he browses on the Internet, what emails he sends, what information about himself he willingly puts on Facebook, what documents he has on his Windows 10 computer, etc..).

One day someone somewhere will press that button. And when that happens we will wake up from our stupor - but it will be too late. Hell on earth.

Sorry, just philosophizing a bit... I'm sure the above is nothing but tin foil hats and conspiracy theories.

So... DoJ's new spin? Apple's stand is just posing for their corporate image and marketing. Too bad DoJ doesn't worry about its careless trampling of our right to privacy under the guise of "protecting" us.

Tell you what, D.C.: Let us protect ourselves and you all butt out of our privacy, thanks very much.

The nine most dreaded words: "I'm from the government and I'm here to help!"

My point is, getting a warrant when you're in custody for the crime should be easier.  In other words, it's not an unreasonable search.  It appears as if proper procedures were followed to get the order.

That'll be right on the money [no pun].

Apple needs to protect its 'bottom line'.

Remember...this company is ever so righteous and humane.... but if it loses a single penny how the hell can it afford to purchase more suicide catch nets?

Let the fuckers first pay Oz the $300 million they owe in 'avoided' taxes .... then I might just consider them slightly less than pond scum.

There are really fucking good reasons why I own exactly zero products from Apple.

When does all this 'we must protect self above all else' end....?  What about the quite LEGITIMATE scenario that NOT accessing an ACTUAL terrorist's information fails to prevent a second 9-11 ?

Don't worry about the dead....at least our rights are intact.

It's utter bullshit.... this distorted sense of 'right'.

Ben Franklin would tend to disagree, I'd think, but he's unavailable for comment.

There is no 'third option' that both guarantees individual liberties and prevents bad actors from being bad.

Scenario 1: Favoring sustaining individual rights has consequences.

Scenario 2: Favoring compromising individual rights in the name of safety* has consequences.

Either choice will necessarily involve unknown (and unknowable) potential consequences, but scenario two tempts with the false implication that 'knowing' who will win or lose is possible.

Given a choice between only those two scenarios, our Founders bet on sustaining individual rights as the choice more likely to benefit the greatest number to the greatest degree.  I still think they made the right bet.  But I'm open to changing my mind if someone can come up with that elusive third option, and make it operable in the real world.

*Safety is a vague and relative term, subject to all forms of preference and interpretation.

This is not a perfect world, so every choice we make will have good consequences and bad consequences. What we must do is try to chose the one that is the least bad (or does the most good) *in the long run*.

It's not easy because we tend to see just the immediate benefit - but it's the long term potential consequences we MUST try to 'guess' before making a choice.

Even then sometimes we make mistakes. So something else that is essential is the ability to stop and re-evaluate. Look back, re-think, and not be afraid to admit you have made a mistake - and then act on that realization.

One of the big problems with society - and why it is so dangerous to establish precedents/new laws before REALLY thinking them through - is that society really has a lot of inertia... it does not stop to re-evaluate. Once the cat is out of the bag, it stays out of the bag, the course has been set and it's full speed ahead (and damn the torpedoes).

Getting whatever is inside this guy's phone has a short term benefit (which is to find out if the criminal had other accomplices, and, if so, who they were). That is a good thing in itself (see, the 'smaller picture' I mentioned above?). But doing this will have long term consequences on the privacy and liberties of each and every individual, not just terrorists. If you fail to see the bigger picture, you have once again let yourself be deceived by evil.

I'm putting these things as evil vs. good and right vs. wrong because truthfully this is the way I see them, and I don't see what is happening here as something isolated from what is happening in other areas.

Worse, the people trying to force this issue (the FBI, DOJ, etc...) are precisely the ones that swore to defend the US constitution and the bill of rights. And I'm sorry because I know most of you are not going to like to hear this, but the land of the free is also the land responsible for abominations such as the TSA, the invasion of Irak with that WMD lie (I don't think anyone still buys that WMD story now, right?), etc... So what the hell is happening?

Look, I remember when something as innocuous as an application 'phoning home' to report useful statistical data or activate itself *with full disclosure* would cause a bloody riot. These days you have the OS itself admittedly and actively collecting a ton of data (with no way of knowing exactly what data is being sent because it is encrypted, and worse, with no way to turn data collection off) and people... people just shudder and use that OS version anyway.

And there you go. It's still the same sh*t, you just got used to the smell.

Precisely, Jorge.

Interesting twist on the story.

An even twistier twist.

9/11 could have been stopped by any number of things.  Bugging everyone's calls, secretly monitoring everyone in their homes, strip searching people before they get on flights, the list is unimaginably long, basically only limited by one's imagination.

I may hold Apple with the same disdain I'd have viewing a pile of dog shit on my lawn, but the government can still go fuck itself.  They have no right to demand private individuals destroy their property for them.  Assuming the likely, that this is entirely about their bottom line and they don't give a red rats ass about our privacy, that's enough for me.  If Apple must compromise privacy and damage the value of their products for my security, then there is no rational limit on what kind of property destruction can be justified in the name of preventing a terrorist attack.  Buy a gun, fuck the FBI.

There are a myriad of ways people get the shaft in every day activities, because some asshole decided we weren't safe enough and needed to be restricted for our own protection, instead of turning the middle east into a sheet of glass and solving the actual problem of a culture rooted in nazi fascism and a religion founded by a pedophile teaching murder and enslavement of anyone that wont join it.

Life isn't safe, people die all the time, nearly everyone that does either goes by natural causes, or in an accident.  Restricting your freedom for some small reduction in the obscenely small likelihood that you will be one of the people that dies to violence, when you could carry and do a hell of a lot better for the inconvenience of a few pounds of metal, is insanity.