WASHINGTON — In the latest volley in its high-profile fight with Apple, the Justice Department said on Monday that a federal judge in Brooklyn had erred last week in refusing to order the company to unlock a drug dealer’s iPhone.

“Apple is not being asked to do anything it does not currently have the capability to do,” Justice Department prosecutors said as they appealed the decision made last week by Magistrate Judge James Orenstein of Federal District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

The prosecutors argued that their demand for technical help was a routine law enforcement request — no different from the “dozens” of times that Apple had agreed to cooperate in cases before this one — and that it “in no way upends the balance between privacy and security.”

Lawyers and analysts on both sides of the encryption debate are watching the Brooklyn case closely because they believe it could foreshadow the ultimate outcome of the case involving an iPhone used by one of the attackers in the December terrorist rampage in San Bernardino, Calif.