The Department of Justice
said Friday it is pressing forward in its legal fight to
force Apple's assistance in unlocking an iPhone linked to a drug conspiracy
case in New York City.
In a one-page letter filed in a New
York federal court, DOJ lawyers said the government "continues to
require Apple's assistance in accessing the data'' on the iPhone of
Jun Feng, a Queens, N.Y., suspect who pleaded guilty in a methamphetamine
conspiracy case.
more....
The Brooklyn federal court filing
came a week after the government abruptly withdrew from a similar
high-profile legal challenge in California after the FBI was able to access the
contents of the iPhone used by San Bernardino terrorist Syed Farook, using
a method developed by an undisclosed outside party.
The government's position signals a
continuing legal battle that pits privacy issues against law enforcement and
national security concerns. The issue has drawn contrasting legal
arguments from tech companies, civil liberties experts and government
authorities across the nation and beyond.
The smartphone in the Brooklyn
federal court case is an iPhone 5S, running on Apple’s iOS7 operating system.
Both the model and operating system are different from the iPhone in the
San Bernardino case.
Federal investigators ran tests to
determine whether the third-party method that enabled them to
extract data from the San Bernardino iPhone would work on other
Apple models, a senior law enforcement official said Friday. The government
representative was not authorized to comment publicly on the pending legal
matter and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Asked whether investigators had
tested the third-party extraction method on the iPhone in the Brooklyn case,
the official cited FBI Director James Comey’s statement Wednesday that the
method works only on a "narrow slice" of iPhones, not all models.
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