Boston judge ordered Apple to give FBI iPhone data in gang case

A federal judge in Boston ordered Apple to help the FBI access information on a suspect’s locked iPhone earlier this year, according to court filings unsealed Friday.

{mosads}U.S. Magistrate Judge Marianne Bowler said that the tech giant must provide “reasonable technical assistance” to law enforcement, including “extracting data from the device, copying the data from the device onto an external hard drive … and/or providing the FBI with the suspect Personal Identification Number so that access can be gained.”

But Bowler stopped short of requiring that the company decrypt the information on the iPhone. The iPhone belongs to Desmond Crawford, an alleged gang member, whom the FBI is investigating.

“To the extent that data on the device is encrypted, Apple may provide a copy of the encrypted data to law enforcement but Apple is not required to attempt to decrypt, or otherwise enable law enforcement’s attempts to access any encrypted data,” Bowler wrote in her February order.

Apple is publicly refusing to help law enforcement gain access to seized iPhones, arguing that the assistance the government is seeking would undermine the security and privacy of Apple devices for everyday users.

The FBI recently backed out of a high-profile case involving the iPhone 5c belonging to Syed Rizwan Farook, one of the two San Bernardino, Calif., shooters, after the agency found a way to access the device without Apple’s help.

In both the San Bernardino case and the Boston case, the government sought to use an 18th-century law called the All Writs Act to compel Apple to help unlock the device in question.

The agency has sought dozens of similar court orders across the country — with mixed results.

In the Eastern District of New York, the government is currently appealing a recent decision by Magistrate Judge James Orenstein, which said that Apple could not be forced to comply with the request to turn over unencrypted data from an already-convicted drug dealer’s phone.

The different cases have exposed a long-running dispute between law enforcement and tech firms over the degree of guaranteed access investigators should be able to claim to locked or encrypted devices.

Some onlookers believe that until Congress weighs in, courts across the country will remain split.

According to data from the American Civil Liberties Union, the federal government has requested at least 63 court orders directing Apple or Google to help unlock a mobile device in police custody.

Congress may yet weigh in: A long-awaited measure from Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and ranking member Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) would force companies to provide “technical assistance” to government investigators seeking locked data.

The bill, which has faced stiff criticism from the tech community and privacy advocates, is a response to concerns that criminals are increasingly using encrypted devices to hide from authorities.

“Instead of heeding the warnings of experts, the senators have written a bill that ignores economic, security, and technical reality,” the ACLU said in a statement Friday. “It would force companies to deliberately weaken the security of their products by providing backdoors into the devices and services that everyone relies on.”