Dear Tim Cook, the DoJ and FBI will no longer require your assistance in unlocking the iPhone of Syed Farook who, along with his wife Tashfeen Malik, murdered more than a dozen people at an employee holiday party in San Bernardino last December.

U.S. DROPS APPLE CASE AFTER SUCCESSFULLY ACCESSING IPHONE DATA

As we outlined last week, Israel's Cellebrite, a provider of mobile forensic software, was set to assist the Feds in their attempt to unlock the iPhone. “The government has now successfully accessed the data stored on Farook’s iPhone and therefore no longer requires the assistance from Apple,” the Justice Department said in a filing (embedded below). Here's the mainstream media line from The New York Times:

Yet law enforcement’s ability to unlock an iPhone through an alternative method raises new uncertainties, including questions about the strength of Apple’s security on its devices. The development also creates potential for new conflicts between the government and Apple. Lawyers for Apple have previously said that the company would want to know the method used to crack open the device. The government may make that method classified. “From a legal standpoint, what happened in the San Bernardino case doesn’t mean the fight is over,” said Esha Bhandari, a staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union. She noted that the government generally goes through a process whereby it decides whether to disclose information about certain vulnerabilities so that manufacturers can patch them. “I would hope they would give that information to Apple so that it can patch any weaknesses,” she said, “but if the government classifies the tool, that suggests it may not.”

Right. Or this could all be nonsense. That is, Apple may have just made America an unwitting participant in an iPublicity stunt, as it were. As we suggested just five days ago, "the entire Apple 'stand' for privacy and consumer rights might be one big theatrical spectacle as both parties involved clearly were aware the iPhone can be penetrated with the right tools." Here's AP:

The FBI says it successfully used a mysterious technique without Apple's help to break into an iPhone linked to the gunman in a California mass shooting. The surprise development effectively ends a pitched court battle between Apple and the Obama administration. The government told a federal court Monday without any details that it accessed data on gunman Syed Farook's iPhone and no longer requires Apple's assistance. Farook and his wife died in a gun battle with police after killing 14 people in San Bernardino, California, in December. Apple did not immediately comment on the development. A U.S. magistrate last month ordered Apple to provide the FBI with software to help it hack into Farook's work-issued iPhone. The order touched off a debate pitting digital privacy rights against national security concerns.

So just like that, it's all over. No hard feelings. And all of this on the heels of what is almost sure to go down as one of the biggest product launch flops in company history. The timing of it all certainly leaves us with more questions than answers.

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