NEW YORK — A federal magistrate in Brooklyn has sided with Apple in a closely watched challenge to the government’s ability to force the company to help it de-encrypt iPhones.
The ruling by U.S. Magistrate James Orenstein in a narcotics case could set a precedent for a similar struggle in California over a government request to make Apple help it break into an iPhone used by the couple who carried out the San Bernardino terror attacks.
The government has made more than 80 such requests, according to court filings. In the past, Apple usually complied, but in recent cases it has challenged the government’s authority under the 200-year-old All Writs Act.
Orenstein said that the balance between security and privacy was a critical one that had to be determined by Congress, and the government could not rely on a law passed in the 1700s before phones existed.
“That debate must happen today, and it must take place among legislators who are equipped to consider the technological and cultural realities of a world their predecessors could not begin to conceive,” Orenstein wrote.
“It would betray our constitutional heritage and our people’s claim to democratic governance for a judge to pretend that our Founders already had that debate, and ended it, in 1789,” he added.