What I am hearing about cracking an iPhone is that an update can be applied to a locked and encrypted phone. As the hardware ID is (1) embedded in the phone, (2) not revealed to the user at any time, (3) is part of the encryption key, an update that forces this specific hardware id to set its unlock code to a specified value could enable entry, but to what end?
Apple turned over the perp's unencrypted cloud backup data from six week ago. The perp's notebook and PC likely have lots of info, and the phone service providers have call records. The only other info might be just pictures of cats and regret messages for missing dentist appointments.
The bigger issue is that the FBI has a dozen other locked phones. And then we start to slide. Many police departments have locked phones that are related to crimes that do not conjure terrorism. Doesn't every lawyer on either side of a case want to know what's on a phone? It gets 'slipperier'...
What do you do when when Putin hands you 50 phones to crack? Or the leaders of China or North Korea or Pakistan for fuzzy reasons that dissenters are fomenting revolt.
A pundit references Breitbart's piece on how Apple bends over for China. But what is described there is very different. It is unclear whether Apple revealed anything about "spyware"... whatever that would be. And accepting that cloud backups are probably best kept on hardware within each nation is a good idea... we really do not want their user's data. And I assure you that no source code or architectural designs left Cupertino or ever will. None of this expresses cracking an individual user's device. Apple did not bend over for China IMHO, they just assured sovereign status. Trust me, the Chinese are not cracking locked devices.
So what does Apple do as the flood of cracking requests builds? Have a Board of Arbitration that decides whose request is worthy and legitimate? Once cracking gets out of the box entirely you might just drop a phone off at a kiosk in your local mall to get it cracked while you shop.
What single galvanizing event would be big enough to really push this over the top? Well, you gotta think that if the current iPhone technology were pervasive in 1962, Lee Harvey Oswald's cell phone data would be damned interesting.
Reflecting on this a bit, the pilots that flew the planes into the Wold Trade Center were so methodical in their planning that there really (AFAIK) isn't much more to know about them or their motives.
Apple is playing a dangerous game. The first terrorist attack that could have been avoided by Apple's cooperation here will not only cost them in the legal courts but also in the court of public opinion. This is independent of its moral stand on personal privacy.
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