The United States Department of Justice said Monday it had managed to unlock an iPhone which had been used by one of the shooters in the attack in San Bernardino and dropped her legal case against Apple, ending a legal battle high risk but leaving the broader struggle over the encryption unresolved.
The abrupt case ends a standoff that had paralyzed the technology industry which was a victory for Apple, which strongly opposed a court order obtained by the Justice Department that would have required to write new software to enter the iPhone.
"From the beginning, we opposed the FBI demand for Apple to build a backdoor on the iPhone because we believed it was a mistake and would set a dangerous precedent," Apple said in a statement Monday. "As a result of the dismissal of the government, none of them happened. This lawsuit never should have been brought. "
But the struggle for wider law enforcement access to encrypted information is in no way is over. The technology industry is convinced that anything that helps the authorities ignore the security features of high-tech products undermine security for all.
The case was an iPhone used by Rizwan Farook, one of the shooters at the December riot in San Bernardino, California, in which 14 people died and 22 were injured. The couple died in a shootout with police after the attack.
In one of the two-page court filing Monday, the Justice Department said the government had managed to access the data stored on the iPhone and therefore Farook and Apple support is required. a federal judge in Riverside, California was asked to withdraw the order forcing Apple to help.
"We will continue to help the police with their investigations, as we have done from the beginning, and we will continue to increase the safety of our products as threats and attacks on our data more frequent and more sophisticated are made," he said Apple in his statement.
Industry-leading technology as Google, Facebook and Microsoft and other companies filed legal briefs in support of Apple. The Department of Justice received the support of the groups responsible for law and six relatives of the victims of San Bernardino comply.
