Terming Apple’s rhetoric as “false” the U.S. Justice Department in the high-profile precedent setting case said Apple’s arguments were “… also corrosive of the very institutions that are best able to safeguard our liberty and our rights: the courts, the Fourth Amendment, longstanding precedent and venerable laws, and the democratically elected branches of government,"
 
The FBI is trying to force Apple to unlock the encryption in its flagship smartphone which belonged to one of the San Bernardino shooters. Last month, the FBI even got a court order which demanded that Apple write new software which disables the passcode protection so that they can access Rizwan Farook, the shooter’s iPhone.
 
Apple has stood its ground and has yet to comply with the order since it says creating a "back door" to its smartphones could be potentially abused by criminals and government alike. It has also shot back saying the U.S. Congress has not authorized the Justice Department to make such demands.
 
The Justice Department’s filing was the last chance to make its case ahead of a hearing which is scheduled to take place in a Federal Court on March 22 in California.
 
Apple’s clash with the FBI’s demands has intensified long-running debates over the quantum of monitoring capability law enforcement and intelligence agencies should have in this digital age.
 
Portraying its stance as "the primary guardian of Americans' privacy" Apple has attacked the FBI’s investigation and has termed it as "shoddy".
 
Prosecutors from the Justice Department have countered saying Apple has "deliberately raised technological barriers" so as to prevent the execution of a warrant.
 
Apple has maintained that if it were to comply with such requests it would open the floodgates of pressure for the company from repressive regimes which are likely to want similar assistance.
 
The Justice Department has countered saying, "… according to Apple's own data, China demanded information from Apple regarding over 4,000 iPhones in the first half of 2015, and Apple produced data 74 percent of the time."
 
As per the FBI, Rizwan Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik carried out their shooting which killed 14 people on December 2. They were inspired by Islamic militants. The FBI wants to read the data in Farook's work phone in order to unravel potential links with other militant groups he may have worked with.
 
While the Justice Department has received support from six relatives of the San Bernardino victims, leaders from the tech industry, including, Microsoft, Google and Facebook have stood behind Apple.
 
Prosecutors have said the Justice Department’s requests are not about undermining encryption but to narrowly access the "non-encryption barrier" in the iPhone.
 
Citing a 1807 case wherein it was held that a clerk working for Aaron Burr, the then former U.S. Vice President, could be forced to decode a letter penned by Nurr if doing so did not lead to self-incrimination, prosecutors from the Justice Department have held requesting decryption services  isn’t something new.
 
Earlier this week, the Justice Department tried to overturn a rule which protected Apple from unlocking an iPhone in a drug case in New York which raised similar issues. In that case, a Brooklyn judge gave Apple two weeks to respond to the government's bid.
 
 

Wading into the controversy created by the FBI’s request to Apple to create software capable of circumventing security related features in its flagship smartphone in the wake of the terror shootings in San Bernardino, California, Defence Secretary Ash Carter has called on the U.S. tech sector to play a greater role, as innovators and entrepreneurs, in national security.
 
During his third trip to Silicon Valley, since taking office a year ago, Carter has called for greater synergies between the public and the private sector on data security. He has underscored the fact that the cost of not doing so is very great since it would allow countries such as China, Russia and others who do not prefer a free internet, to set new global standards.
 
Although he did not specifically address the on-going litigation, he again underscored the fact that the Pentagon is the world’s largest user of encryption technology and strong encryption is critical. It would be unfortunate if one particular case were to drive future policy considerations, he said.
 
"We shouldn’t let the solutions to this larger issue of how to handle data security as a society be driven by any one particular case. It would be unreasonable," said Carter to reporters after a speech to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco.
 
Noting that the issue of data protection to be a complex one as it involved a whole range of scenarios, including data at rest, data in motion and data crossing borders; solutions to issues emanating from these complexities should be hammered out between players in the private and public sector.
 
In related news, James Comey, the FBI Director, has told in a congressional hearing that if the court were to force Apple to provide the FBI data from the iPhone 5c in the San Bernadino case, it would be “potentially precedential”.
 
He has further warned against new legislation spurred solely from the facts of this one particular case.
 
"It is easy to see wrong ways to do this. One would be a law hastily written in anger or grief. Another would be to have the rules be written by Russia or China," said Carter.
 
After the congressional hearing, Carter along with his chief arms buyer, met up with five small companies for an event which was styled on the TV series “Shark Tank” wherein entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to investors.
 
Commenting on some of the interesting ideas that were throw around during the discussion, Carter said new technological ideas including unmanned surface drones and ways to visualise big data had in particular made an impact on him. He was particularly impressed by the “tremendous” people behind the ideas.
 
"I hope we steal some of them," said Carter.