FBI fight with Apple is a big farce to get inside your phone
america.aljazeera.com
america.aljazeera.com
It may be that Apple already fully cooperates with the FBI to unlock devices. And this whole public dispute is just orchestrated.
I predict that Apple wins big and that their victory will be very public and greatly celebrated. The purpose of this is to convince criminals to buy iPhones.
1. As you suspect, maybe the iPhone is the easiest window to the lives of people that they have. If they could convince criminals to carry iPhones, it'd make the job of pervasive surveillance very easy.
2. The FBI already has that data.
But without being able to get into the phone -- they can't use parallel construction to manufacture a plausible story of how they acquired the data they already have.
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Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.