&gt; AWA allows courts to order anything so long as neither the Constitution nor laws passed by Congress explicitly forbid it.<p>And that interpretation the judge considers absurd:<p>&quot;the government&#x27;s construction of the AWA produces absurd results in application. If, for example the President sent to Congress a bill explicitly authorizing a court to issue the kind of order the government seeks here, and if every single member of the House and Senate were to vote against the enactment of such a law citing the kinds of data security and personal privacy concerns that Apple now embraces, the government would nevertheless describe the order sought here as permissible because Congress had merely rejected the bill – however emphatically, and however clear its reasons for doing so – rather than affirmatively passing legislation to prohibit the executive branch&#x27;s proposal. Yet in such circumstances, it would be absurd to posit that the authority the government sought was anything other than obnoxious to the law.&quot;<p>And there&#x27;s the related law in which Congress explicitly didn&#x27;t oblige the companies: CALEA.