We Read Apple's 65 Page Filing Calling Bullshit On The Justice Department, So You Don't Have To

Apple didn't need to reply until tomorrow, but has now released its Motion to Vacate the magistrate judge's order from last week, compelling Apple to create a new operating system that undermines a couple of key security features, so that the FBI could then brute force the passcode on Syed Farook's work iPhone. It's clearly a bit of a rush job as there are a few typos (and things like incorrect page numbers in the table of contents). However, it's not too surprising to see the crux of Apple's argument. In summary it's:

• The 1789 All Writs Act doesn't apply at all to this situation for a whole long list of reasons that most of this filing will explain.
• Even if it does, the order is an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment (freedom of expression) and the Fifth Amendment (due process).

I really do recommend reading the 65 page filing (it goes fast!). But on the assumption that you have more of a life than we do, let's dig in and detail what Apple's argument is. The brief is quite well written (other than the typos) in making the issues pretty clear:

This is not a case about one isolated iPhone. Rather, this case is about the Department of Justice and the FBI seeking through the courts a dangerous power that Congress and the American people have withheld: the ability to force companies like Apple to undermine the basic security and privacy interests of hundreds of millions of individuals around the globe. The government demands that Apple create a back door to defeat the encryption on the iPhone, making its users’ most confidential and personal information vulnerable to hackers, identity thieves, hostile foreign agents, and unwarranted government surveillance. The All Writs Act, first enacted in 1789 and on which the government bases its entire case, “does not give the district court a roving commission” to conscript and commandeer Apple in this manner. Plum Creek Lumber Co. v. Hutton, 608 F.2d 1283, 1289 (9th Cir. 1979). In fact, no court has ever authorized what the government now seeks, no law supports such unlimited and sweeping use of the judicial process, and the Constitution forbids it.

The motion also notes the importance of strong encryption in keeping people safe and secure:

Since the dawn of the computer age, there have been malicious people dedicated to breaching security and stealing stored personal information. Indeed, the government itself falls victim to hackers, cyber-criminals, and foreign agents on a regular basis, most famously when foreign hackers breached Office of Personnel Management databases and gained access to personnel records, affecting over 22 million current and former federal workers and family members. In the face of this daily siege, Apple is dedicated to enhancing the security of its devices, so that when customers use an iPhone, they can feel confident that their most private personal information—financial records and credit card information, health information, location data, calendars, personal and political beliefs, family photographs, information about their children—will be safe and secure. To this end, Apple uses encryption to protect its customers from cyber-attack and works hard to improve security with every software release because the threats are becoming more frequent and sophisticated. Beginning with iOS 8, Apple added additional security features that incorporate the passcode into the encryption system. It is these protections that the government now seeks to roll back by judicial decree.

And the filing makes it clear that the government is lying in claiming that this is all just about this phone:

The government says: “Just this once” and “Just this phone.” But the government knows those statements are not true; indeed the government has filed multiple other applications for similar orders, some of which are pending in other courts.2 And as news of this Court’s order broke last week, state and local officials publicly declared their intent to use the proposed operating system to open hundreds of other seized devices—in cases having nothing to do with terrorism. If this order is permitted to stand, it will only be a matter of days before some other prosecutor, in some other important case, before some other judge, seeks a similar order using this case as precedent. Once the floodgates open, they cannot be closed, and the device security that Apple has worked so tirelessly to achieve will be unwound without so much as a congressional vote. As Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, recently noted: “Once created, the technique could be used over and over again, on any number of devices. In the physical world, it would be the equivalent of a master key, capable of opening hundreds of millions of locks—from restaurants and banks to stores and homes. No reasonable person would find that acceptable.”

There's a footnote in the middle of th