The Justice Department filed a motion this morning asking a federal court to compel Apple to comply with a magistrate's order that it help the FBI hack into an iPhone owned by one of the San Bernardino shooter suspects.
A federal magistrate initially gave Apple five business days to respond to her order, released on Tuesday, but the Justice Department decided not to wait for Apple's response, noting in its motion today that Apple CEO Tim Cook had already indicated in a public statement posted to Apple's web site Tuesday that his company would not comply.
"The government does not seek to deny Apple its right to be heard, and expects these issues to be fully briefed before the Court; however, the urgency of this investigation requires this motion now that Apple has made its intention not to comply patently clear," the Justice Department wrote in its 35-page motion (.pdf).
The government takes issue with Cook characterizing the FBI's request as a demand for a "back door to every iPhone" and also says the request does not amount to Apple hacking its own customers. Nor, the government says, will the tool the FBI wants Apple to create to assist the agency with hacking the phone, open the way for hackers and other criminals to hack iPhones.
The government says that Apple's recalcitrance appears to be based on nothing more than "its concern for its business model and public brand marketing strategy."
"Apple has attempted to design and market its products to allow technology, rather than the law, to control access to data which has been found by this Court to be warranted for an important investigation," the Justice Department writes. "Despite its efforts, Apple nonetheless retains the technical ability to comply with the Order, and so should be required to obey it."
As WIRED pointed out this week in a detailed description of what the government wants, the FBI is not asking Apple to unlock the iPhone in question but instead to write a new software tool---essentially a crippled version of its iOS software---to eliminate specific security protections the company built into its phone software to protect customer data. With that software installed on the phone, it would allow the FBI to perform a brute-force password-cracking attack on the phone in an attempt to unlock it and retrieve encrypted data stored on it.
In its motion today, DoJ provided a series of counterarguments to all of the arguments it expects Apple might make in its response to the court next week. In particular, the government said that writing the software tool it requests would not be burdensome to Apple, since the tech giant "writes software code as part of its regular business."
What's more, DoJ notes, Apple CEO Tim Cook never said in his message on Tuesday that the request was technically infeasible or burdensome.
"At no point has Apple ever said that it does not have the technical ability to comply with the Order, or that the Order asks Apple to undertake an unreasonably challenging software development task. On this point, Apple's silence speaks volumes," DoJ wrote in the motion.
Shortly after news of the new motion broke, GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump reportedly called on the public to boycott Apple until it gives in to the government's request.
In the meantime, the fight between the government and Apple got even more high-profile today when the Los Angeles Times reported that Apple has retained renowned Washington attorney Ted Olson to help in its fight over the phone-hacking order.
Olson famously represented George W. Bush in his presidential election Supreme Court battle---Bush vs. Gore---which helped Bush win the 2000 presidential campaign. Olson also fought a successful battle against California’s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage.
The addition of Olson to the Apple team suggests the fight over the San Bernardino phone could eventually head to the Supreme Court.
