In a development that will help ease the tension between Apple Inc. and the DOJ, prosecutors have said a "third party" has presented a possible way out for accessing the data on the encrypted iPhone used one of the terrorists in the San Bernardino case.
 
A federal judge in Riverside, California, has agreed to the government’s proposal of postponing a hearing that was scheduled for yesterday, thus providing the FBI some time to delve into the efficacy of the newly discovered technique. The DOJ has said it will next update the court on April 5.
 
Until now, the government had insisted on Apple to write new software which could effectively defeat the encryption since it had no way to access the encrypted contents of Rizwan Farook’s iPhone.
 
Although the Justice Department had last month obtained a court order which directed Apple to code the new software, Apple fought back saying the said order amounts to an overreach by the government which effectively undermines computer security for all iPhone users.
 
The announcement that a third party had presented a way to hack into the phone, drew widespread scepticism from many in the tech community who had earlier said that there were other ways of accessing that data.
 
“From a purely technical perspective, one of the most fragile parts of the government's case is the claim that Apple's help is required to unlock the phone. Many in the technical community have been skeptical that this is true, especially given the government's considerable resources,” said Matt Blaze, a professor and computer security expert at the University of Pennsylvania.
 
Lawyers and former prosecutors who are supportive of Apple, said the last minute move could possibly suggest that the DOJ feared that it was on a slippery slope or at minimum, it would be forced to admit that it had not tried other alternatives to access the encrypted portion of the iPhone.
 
In its cryptic statement, the DOJ has now stated that even as litigation began, it was exploring alternatives to access the phone, as its only interest lay in gaining access to the information stored in the phone. It did not provide any details of the new technique or the name of the third party other than the fact that it was “cautiously optimistic” that the newly discovered method would work.
 
"That is why we asked the court to give us some time to explore this option," said Melanie R. Newman, a spokeswoman for the DOJ. "If this solution works, it will allow us to search the phone and continue our investigation into the terrorist attack that killed 14 people and wounded 22 people."
 
If the new method were to work, the legal showdown, which many had expected to reach the U.S. Supreme Court, is likely to come to an end.
 
An executive from Apple told reporters that the company wasn’t aware of the Justice Department looking for alternatives routes to break open the terrorist’s iPhone. The government had not provided any indication that it was continuing its search for other solutions. The executive said the recent move by the Justice Department is in sharp contrast to the insistence in its court filings, which said only Apple had the means to access the encrypted data in the iPhone.
 
As per Nate Cardozo, a staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the San Bernardino case was probably a "hand-chosen test case" for the government to establish its authority to access electronic information by whatever means necessary. In this context, finding a possible way out from the hearing due to a third party sounds rather "suspicious," and is probably indicative of the fact that the government may be worried about losing the case and setting a bad precedent.
 
However, Orin Kerr, a professor of Law at George Washington University and a former Justice Department computer crime prosecutor, interpreted the government’s move as a postponing of the fight.

"The problem is not going away, it's just been delayed for a year or two," said Kerr.
 
Meanwhile, Apple said if the government was successful in breaking open into its smartphone by taking advantage of a yet-to-be-discovered vulnerability, it hoped the government would share that info. However, if the government were to drop its case, it would be under no obligation to share that info with Apple.
 
 

In the latest Apple has once again said it would be unable to comply with the FBI’s demand to assist it break open the San Bernardino’s shooter’s iPhone 5c.
 
In the latest filing of its reply in the brief, Cupertino response to the DOJ stated that the government is essentially trying to "rewrite history by portraying the [All Writs] Act as an all-powerful magic wand rather than the limited procedural tool it is."
 
Reiterating its stand that complying with the FBI demand would set a dangerous precedent as the "security and privacy of millions of citizens" will be stake. Furthermore, Apple has argued that the DOJ is misleading the court by stating the case is just about a single iPhone, when the director of the FBI himself admitted otherwise.
 
While testifying before the congress, the FBI director had said, "The broader question we're talking about here goes far beyond phones or far beyond any case."
 
While stating its many reasons as to why it is refusing to submit to the FBI’s demand, Apple also grazed the touchy subject of the DOJ wanting to create a backdoor in its operating system. In fact, the DOJ has thrown in a calculated threat of forcing Apple to hand over the source code and the digital signature if it were to thwart its efforts at compliance to its orders.
 
"The catastrophic security implications of that threat only highlight the government's fundamental misunderstanding or reckless disregard of the technology at issue and the security risks implicated by its suggestion," read a portion of Apple’s filing.
 
With the weight of tech industry giants supporting it, Apple has so far stood its ground, against a menacing goliath.
 
 

A study of the latest filings in the ongoing legal war between the Justice Department and Apple is likely to indicate in what direction this confrontation which holds essentially wants to balance the right of the individual against the state’s duty to protect its citizens against terrorists exploiting the freedom given to its citizens.
 
Observers of the case have called the Justice Department demand to hand over the “source code” of its underlying products so that they can get access to the “signing key”, which authenticates the software as coming from Apple, a key calibrated threat to the Cupertino.
 
Once the Justice Department gets its hands over the source code and the signing keys, it will be in a position to create its own spy software that can be loaded into any iPhone. Significantly, this will mean, the end user will be unable to know whether the source of the software that they depend on.
 
Technological and security experts have warned that if Apple were to hands over its source code to the U.S. Government with a conventional court order, other governments will follow suit.
 
"We think that would be pretty terrible," said Joseph Lorenzo Hall, chief technologist at Democracy & Technology a non-profit organization.
 
The battle between the two giants started when terrorists struck in San Bernardino, California, killing 14 people. The FBI got hold of the shooters iPhone and has been trying to unlock it to unravel other potential terror links.
 
Apple has taken the stand the stand that complying with the FBI’s demand would set an open-ended precedent exploitable by other governments as well.
 
The Justice Department’s view on the signing keys and the source code came in a footnote and relates to its previous week filing which essentially amounted to a rejection of Apple’s arguments. Apple is set to response to the DOJ today.
 
Laying the grounds for their requests for the iOS source code and the signing keys, lawyers from the DOJ said “such a request would be less palatable to Apple. If Apple would prefer that course, however, that may provide an alternative that requires less labor by Apple.”
 
Lawyers familiar with the case have said the footnote corresponds to what they term as a "nuclear option," which seeks the most prized assets of lucrative technology companies.
 
People who are closely monitoring the case expect it to travel to the U.S. Supreme Court and have very little expectation on how the government’s demand for source code and signing keys will finally end up.
 
The closest precedence to this case was a case against Lavabit LLC,when federal prosecutors targeted Edward Snowden. In that case, the DOJ being unable to retrieve Snowden’s unencrypted mail from Lavabit, got a court order which forced the company to hand over another set of keys, which allowed the DOJ to impersonate themselves as Lavabit and thus intercept all communications.
 
At that point of time, the lower court had ruled, “Lavabit must provide any and all information necessary to decrypt the content, including, but not limited to public and private keys and algorithms,” Rather than comply Lavabit shut down shop.
 
Jesse Binnall, a lawyer for Lavabit said, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the ruling of the lower court, did so only on procedural grounds, so that the Justice Department’s win would not have wide repercussions.
 
Binnall went on to say, getting access to the source code would be even more valuable than getting traffic data, as it did in the Lavabit case, and she expects the industry to go to extreme lengths to fight its case.
 
“That really is the keys to the kingdom,” said Binnall.
 
Although source code is extremely precious, it is however provided during lawsuit involving intellectual property. In fact Apple won permission to revie some of Samsung’s code, in one such case. Naturally the when the source code is produced there are strict rules which prevent it from being copied.
 
As yet no case has been brought about by the U.S government that led to an inspection of source code, or at least none have come to light, so far.