Late today the US government fired back at Apple's refusal to help investigators open the San Bernardino shooter's iPhone, saying that its rhetoric about the wider security and privacy implications was corrosive and overblown. Our report provides you with a copy of the actual government filing for your independent review along with a few key flash points made in the filing as well as the government's full conclusion. To top off our report we provide you with a few counter points made by Apple's Senior Legal VP Bruce Sewell who stated that the tone of the government's brief read like an indictment.

Full Government Reply in Support of Motion to Compel

Patently Apple Government s Reply to Apple s Motion to Vacate

Random Points from the Government's Filing

As Apple Inc. concedes in its Opposition, it is fully capable of complying with the Court's Order. By Apple's own reckoning, the corporation—which grosses hundreds of billions of dollars a year—would need to set aside as few as six of its 100,000 employees for perhaps as little as two weeks. This burden, which is not unreasonable, is the direct result of Apple's deliberate marketing decision to engineer its products so that the government cannot search them, even with a warrant.

The Court's Order is modest. It applies to a single iPhone, and it allows Apple to decide the least burdensome means of complying. As Apple well knows, the Order does not compel it to unlock other iPhones or to give the government a universal "master key" or "back door."

Apple and its amici try to alarm this Court with issues of network security, encryption, back doors, and privacy, invoking larger debates before Congress and in the news media. That is a diversion. Apple desperately wants—desperately needs—this case not to be "about one isolated iPhone." But there is probable cause to believe there is evidence of a terrorist attack on that phone, and our legal system gives this Court the authority to see that it can be searched pursuant to a lawful warrant.

The government and the community need to know what is on the terrorist's phone, and the government needs Apple's assistance to find out. For that reason, the Court properly ordered Apple to disable the warrant-proof barriers it designed. Instead of complying, Apple attacked the All Writs Act as archaic, the Court's Order as leading to a "police state," and the FBI's investigation as shoddy, while extolling itself as the primary guardian of Americans' privacy.

Even if "criminals, terrorists, and hackers" somehow infiltrated Apple and stole the software necessary to unlock Farook's iPhone, the only thing that software could be used to do is unlock Farook's iPhone. Far from being a master key, the software simply disarms a booby trap affixed to one door: Farook's.

The Government's Conclusion in Full

The All Writs Act empowered this Court to issue the Order, just as it empowered a court to order a corporation to engage in computer programming and technical assistance in Mountain Bell. As the Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized—and as Congress's repeated reaffirmation and expansion of the Act have confirmed—the Act's flexibility in confronting new problems shows the Framers' foresight and genius, not a blind spot. As the decades since New York Telephone have shown, as indeed the centuries since 1789 have proven, courts' exercise of power under the Act does not lead to a headlong tumble down a slippery slope to tyranny. That is because the Act itself—by relying upon the sound discretion of federal judges and by being subordinate to specific congressional legislation addressing the particular issue—builds in the necessary safeguards. Moreover, the Fourth Amendment, which Apple concedes has been satisfied here, protects against unreasonable privacy invasions.

In short, the limits Apple seeks are already found in the Constitution, the Act, and the three branches of government: congressional legislation, executive restraint, and judicial discretion. The government respectfully submits that those authorities should be entrusted to strike the balance between each citizen's right to privacy and all citizens' right to safety and justice. The rule of law does not repose that power in a single corporation, no matter how successful it has been in selling its products.

Accordingly, the government respectfully requests that this Court DENY Apple's motion to vacate this Court's February 16, 2016 Order, and compel Apple to assist the FBI in unlocking Farook's iPhone.

Apple's Speedy Public Response In-Part

Bruce Sewell, Apple's general counsel and senior vice president of Legal and Government Affairs responded speedily to the government's latest filing.

Sewell noted that "We received the brief just over an hour ago and honestly we're still absorbing it but we wanted to get a couple of points out for you guys as you're working your way through it.

First, the tone of the brief reads like an indictment. We've all heard Director Comey and Attorney General Lynch thank Apple for its consistent help in working with law enforcement. Director Comey's own statement that "there are no demons here." Well, you certainly wouldn't conclude it from this brief. In 30 years of practice I don't think I've seen a legal brief that was more intended to smear the other side with false accusations and innuendo, and less intended to focus on the real merits of the case.

For the first time we see an allegation that Apple has deliberately made changes to block law enforcement requests for access. This should be deeply offensive to everyone that reads it. An unsupported, unsubstantiated effort to vilify Apple rather than confront the issues in the case.

We know there are great people in the DoJ and the FBI. We work shoulder to shoulder with them all the time. That's why this cheap shot brief surprises us so much. For more on Apple's response, see the full Business Insider report here.

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